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GALA-DAYS 



BY 



GAIL HAMILTON 

AUTHOR OF "country LIVING AND COUNTRY THINKING. 



^^wd^ 



>>..> .u^f^ ir^ 




BOS TON 
TICKNOR AND FIELDS 

1864 



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s 

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Entered accoiding to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by 
TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 
the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massac' 



F O U K T Ji EDITION. 



University Press: 

Welch, Bigelow, and Company, 

Cambridge. 



am) 

f 



Con 



TENTS 



Gaia Days i 

A Call to my Countrywomen .... 249 

A Spasm of Sense 265 

Camilla's Concert 301 

Cheri .... .... 331 

Side-Glances at Harvard v^ lass-Day . . . 351 

Success in Life 389 

Happiest Days 409 




Gala-Days. 
? 



Gala-Days. 



I 




garret. 



^NCE there was a great noise in our 
house, — a thumping and battering 
and grating. It was my own self 
dragging my big trunk down from the 
I did it myself because I wanted it done. 
If I had said, " Halicarnassus, will you fetch my 
trunk down ? " he would have asked me what 
trunk ? and what did I want of it ? and would not 
the other one be better ? and could n't I wait till 
after dinner ? — and so the trunk would probably 
have had a three-days journey from garret to 
basement. ' Now I am strong in the wrists and 
weak in the temper ; therefore I used the one and 
spared the other, and got the trunk down-stairs 
myself. Halicarnassus heard the uproar. He 
must have been deaf not to hear it ; for the old 
ark banged and bounced, and scraped the paint 
off the stairs, and pitched head-foremost into the 
wall, and gouged out the plastering, and dinted the 



4 GALA-DAYS. 

mop-board, and was the most stupid, awkward, 
uncompromising, unmanageable thing I ever got 
hold of in my life. 

By the time I had zigzagged it into the back 
chamber, Hahcarnassus loomed up the back stairs. 
I stood hot and panting, with the inside of my fin- 
gers tortured into burning leather, the skin rubbed 
off three knuckles, and a bruise on the back of my 
right hand, where the trunk had crushed it against 
a sharp edge of the doorway. 

" Now, then ? '* said Hahcarnassus interroga- 
tively. 

" To be sure," I replied affirmatively. 

He said no more, but went and looked up the 
garret-stairs. They bore traces of a severe en- 
counter, that must be confessed. 

" Do you wish me to give you a bit of advice ? " 
he asked. 

" No ! " I answered promptly. 

" Well, then, here it is. The next time you 
design to bring a trunk down-stairs, you would 
better cut away the underpinning, and knock out 
the beams, and let the garret down into the cellar. 
It will make less uproar, and not take so much to 
repair damages." 

He intended to be severe. His words passed 
by me as the idle wind. I perched on my trunk, 
took a pasteboard box-cover and fanned myself. I 
was very warm. Hahcarnassus sat down on the 
lowest stair and remained silent several minutes, 



GALA-DAYS. 5 

expecting a meek explanation, but not getting it, 
swallowed a bountiful piece of what is called in 
homely talk, " humble-pie," and said, — 

" I should like to know what 's in the wind 
now." 

I make it a principle always to resent an insult 
and to welcome repentance with equal alacrity. 
If people thrust out their horns at me w^antonly, 
they very soon run against a stone-wall ; but the 
moment they show signs of contrition, I soften. 
It is the best way. Don't insist that people shall 
grovel at your feet before you accept their apology. 
That is not magnanimous. Let mercy temper 
justice. It is a hard thing at best for human 
nature to go down into the Valley of Humiliation ; 
and although, when circumstances arise which 
make it the only fit place for a person, I insist 
upon his going, still no sooner does he actually 
begin the descent than my sense of justice is 
appeased, my natural sweetness of disposition re- 
sumes sway, and I trip along by his side chatting 
as gayly as if I did not perceive it was the Valley 
of Humiliation at all, but fancied it the Delectable 
Mountains. So, upon the first symptoms of placa- 
bility, I answered cordially, — 

" Halicarnassus, it has been the ambition of my 
life to write a book of travels. But to write a 
book of travels, one must first have travelled." 

" Not at all," he responded. " With an atlas 
and an encyclopaedia one can travel around the 
world in his arm-chair." 



6 GALA-DAYS. 

" But one cannot have personal adventures," I 
said. "You can, indeed, sit in your arm-chair 
and describe the crater of Vesuvius ; but you can- 
not tumble into the crater of Vesuvius from your 
arm-chair." 

" I have never heard that it was necessary to 
tumble in, in order to have a good view of the 
mountain." 

" But it is necessary to do it, if one would make 
a readable book." 

" Then I should let the book slide, — rather 
than slide myself." 

" If you would do me the honor to listen," I 
said, scornful of his paltry attempt at wit, " you 
would see that the book is the object of my travel- 
lino;. I travel to write. I do not write because I 
have travelled. I am not going to subordinate 
my book to my adventures. My adventures are 
going to be arranged beforehand with a view to 
my book." 

" A most original way of getting up a book !" 

"Not in the least. It is the most common 
thing in the world. Look at our dear British 
cousins." 

" And see them make guys of themselves. 
They visit a magnificent country that is trying the 
experiment of the world, and write about their 
shaving-soap and their babies' nurses." 

" Just where they are right. Just why I like 
the race, from Trollope down. They give you 



GAL%-DAYS. 7' 

something to take hold of. I tell yon, Hallcarnas- 
sus, it is the personality of the writer, and not the 
nature of the scenery or of the mstitutions, that 
makes the interest. It stands to reason. If it 
were not so, one book would be all that ever need 
be written, and that book would be a census 
report. For a republic is a republic, and Niagara 
is Niagara forever ; but tell how you stood on the 
chain-bridge at Niagara — if there is one there — 
and bought a cake of shaving-soap from a tribe of 
Indians at a fabulous price, or how your baby 
jumped from the arms of the careless nurse into 
the Falls, and immediately your own individuality 
is thrown around the scenery, and it acquires a 
human interest. It is always five miles from one 
place to another, but that is mere almanac and 
statistics. Let a poet walk the five miles, and 
narrate his experience with birds and bees and 
flowers and grasses and water and sky, and it 
becomes literature. And let me tell you further^ 
sir, a book of travels is just as interesting as the 
person who writes it is interesting. It is not the 
countries, but the persons, that are ' shown up.' 
You go to France and write a dull book. I go to 
France and write a lively book. But France is 
the same. The difference is in ourselves." 

Halicarnassus glowered at me. I think I am 
not using strained or extravagant language when 
I say that he glowered at me. Then he growled 
out, — 



3 GALA-DAYS. 

" So your book of travels is just to put yourself 
into pickle." 

" Say, rather," I answered, with sweet humility, 
— " say, rather, it is to shrine myself in amber. 
As the insignificant fly, encompassed with molten 
glory, passes into a crystallized immortality, his 
own littleness uplifted into loveliness by the beauty 
in which he is imprisoned, so I, wrapped around 
by the glory of my land, may find myself niched 
into a fame which my unattended and naked merit 
could never have claimed." 

HaHcarnassus was a little stunned, but pres- 
ently recovering himself, suggested that I had 
travelled enough already to make out a quite 
sizable book. 

" Travelled ! " I said, looking him steadily in 
the face, — " travelled ! I went once up to Tudiz 
huckleberrying ; and once, when there was a 
freshet, you took a superannuated broom and 
paddled me around the orchard in a leaky pig's- 
trough ! " 

He could not deny it ; so he laughed, and 
said, — 

" Ah, well ! — ah, well ! Suit yourself. Take 
your trunk and pitch into Vesuvius, if you like. 
I won't stand in your way." 

His acquiescence was ungraciously, and I be- 
lieve I may say ambiguously, expressed ; but it 
mattered little, for I gathered up my goods and 
chattels, strapped them into my trunk, and waited 



GALA-DAYS. 9 

for the summer to send us on our way rejoicing, 
—7 the gentle and gracious young summer, that 
had come by the calendar, but had lost her way 
on the thermometer. O these delaying Springs, 
that mock the merry-making of ancestral Eng- 
land ! Is the world grown so old and stricken 
in years, that, like King David, it gets no heat ? 
Why loiters, where lingers, the beautiful, balm- 
breathing June ? Rosebuds are bound in her 
trailing hair, and the sweep of her garments 
always used to waft a scented gale over the hap- 
py hills. 

'* Here she was wont to go ! and here ! and here ! 
Just where the daisies, pinks, and violets grow; 
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass, 
Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk ! 
But like the soft west-wind she shot along ; 
And where she went the flowers took thickest root, 
As she had sowed them with her odorous foot." 

So sang a rough-handed, silver-voiced, sturdy 
old fellow, harping unconsciously the notes of my 
lament, and the tones of his sorrow wail through 
the green boughs to-day, though he has been 
lying now these two hundred years in England's 
Sleeping Palace, among silent kings and queens. 
Fair and fresh and always young is my lost 
maiden, and " beautiful exceedingly." Her habit 
was to wreathe her garland with the May, and 
everywhere she found most hearty welcome ; 
but May has come and gone, and Jun« is still 
missing. I look longingly afar, but there is no 
1* 



10 GALA-DAYS. 

flutter of her gossamer robes over the distant hills. 
No white cloud floats down the blue heavens, a 
chariot of state, bringing her royally from the 
court of the Kins;. The earth is mournino; her 
absence. A blight has fallen upon the roses, and 
the leaves are gone gray and mottled. The buds 
started up to meet and greet their queen, but her 
golden sceptre was not held forth, and they are 
faint and stunned with terror. The censer which 
they would have swung on the breezes, to gladden 
her heart, is hidden away out of sight, and their 
own hearts are smothered with the incense. The 
beans and the peas and the tasselled corn are 
struck with surprise, as if an eclipse had staggered 
them, and are waiting to see what will turn up, 
determined it shall not be themselves, unless some- 
thing happens pretty soon. The tomatoes are 
thinking, with homesick regret, of the smiling 
Italian gardens, where the sun ripened them to 
mellow beauty, with many a bold caress, and 
they hug their ruddy fruit to their own bosoms, 
and Frost, the cormorant, will grab it all, since 
June disdains the proffered gift, and will not touch 
them with her tender lips. The money-plants 
are growing pale, and biting off" their finger-tips 
with impatience. The marigold whispers his 
suspicion over to the balsam-buds, and neither 
ventures to make a move, quite sure there is 
something wrong. The scarlet tassel-flower ut- 
terly refuses to unfold his brave plumes. The 



GALA-DAYS. 11 

Zinnias look up a moment, shuddering with cold 
chills, conclude there is no good in hurrying, and 
then just pull their brown blankets around them, 
turn over in their beds, and go to sleep again. 
The morning-glories rub their eyes, and are but 
half awake, for all their royal name. The Can- 
terbury-bells may be chiming velvet peals down 
in their dark cathedrals, but no clash nor clangor 
nor faintest echo ripples up into my Garden 
World. Not a bee drones his drowsy song among 
the flowers, for there are no flowers there. One 
venturesome little phlox dared the cold winds, and 
popped up his audacious head, but his pale, puny 
face shows how near he is to beins; frozen to 
death. The poor birds are shivering in their 
nests. They sing a little, just to keep up their 
spirits, and hop about to preserve their circula- 
tion, and capture a bewildered bug or two, but 
I don't beheve there is an egg anywhere round. 
Not only the owl, but the red-breast, and the 
oriole, and the blue-jay, for all his feathers, is 
a-cold. Nothing flourishes but witch-grass and 
canker-worms. Where is June ? — the brio;ht 
and beautiful, the warm and clear and balm- 
breathing June, with her matchless, deep, intense 
sky, and her sunshine, that cleaves into your 
heart, and breaks up all the winter there ? What 
are these sleety fogs about ? Go back into the 
January thaw, where you belong ! What have 
the chill rains, and the raw winds, and the dismal, 



12 GALA-DAYS. 

leaden clouds, and all these flannels and furs to 
do with June, — the perfect June of hope and 
beauty and utter joy ? Where is the June ? 
Has she lost her way among the narrow, inter- 
minable defiles of your crooked old city streets ? 
Go out and find her ! You do not want her 
there. No blade nor blossom will spring from 
your dingy brick, nor your dull, dead stone, 
though you prison her there for a thousand years 
of wandering. Take her by the hand tenderly, 
and bid her fortl^ into the waiting country, which 
will give her a queenly reception, and laurels 
worth the wearing. Have you fallen in love with 
her on the Potomac, O soldiers ? Are you woo- 
ing her with honeyed words on the bloody soil of 
Virginia ? Is she tranced by your glittering 
sword-shine in ransomed Tennessee? Is she 
floatino; on a lotus-leaf in Florida lao-oons ? Has 
she drunk Nepenthe in the orange-groves ? Is 
she chasing golden apples under the magnolias ? 
Are you toying with the tangles of her hair in 
the bright sea-foam ? O, rouse her from her 
trance, loose the fetters from her lovely limbs, 
and speed her to our Northern skies, that moan 
her long delay. 

Or is she frightened by the thunders of the 
cannonade sounding from shore to shore, and 
wakening the wild echoes ? Does she fear to 
breast our bristling bayonets ? Is she stifled by 
the smoke of powder ? Is she crouching down 



GALA-DAYS. 13 

by the Caribbean shores, terror-stricken and pal- 
lid ? Sweet June, fear not ! The flash of loyal 
steel will only light you along your Northern road. 
Beauty and innocence have nothing to dread 
from the sword a patriot wields.) The storm that 
rends the heavens will make earth doubly fair. 
Your pathway shall lie over Delectable Mountains, 
and through vinelands of Beulah. Come quickly, 
tread softly, and from your bountifal bosom scat- 
ter seeds as you come, that daisies and violets 
may softly shine, and sweetly . twine with the 
amaranth and immortelle that spring already from 
heroes' hearts buried in soldiers' graves. 

" But there is no use in placarding her," said 
Hahcarnassus. ""We shall have no warm weather 
till the eclipse is over." 

" So ho ! " I said. " Having exhausted every 
other pretext for delay, you bring out an eclipse ! 
and pray when is this famous affair to come off ? " 

" To-morrow if the weather prove favorable, if 
not, on the first fair night." 

Then indeed I set my house in order. Here 
was something definite and trustworthy. First an 
eclipse, then a book, and yet I pitied the moon 
as I walked home that night. She came up the 
heavens so round and radiant, so glorious in her 
majesty, so confident in her strength, so surfe of 
a triumphal march across the shining sky ; not 
knowing that a great black shadow loomed right 
athwart her path to swallow her up. She never 



U GALA-DAYS. 

dreamed that all her royal beauty should pass be- 
hind a j)all, that all her glory should be demeaned 
by pitiless eclipse, and her dome of delight become 
the valley of humiliation ! Is there no help ? I 
said. Can no hand lead her gently another way ? 
Can no voice warn her of the black shadow that 
lies in ambuscade ? None. Just as the young 
girl leaves her tender home, and goes fearless to 
her future, — to the future which brings sadness 
for her smiling, and patience for her hope, and 
pain for her bloom, and the cold requital of kind- 
ness, or the unrequital of coldness for her warmth 
of love, so goes the moon, unconscious and serene, 
to meet her fate. But at least I will watch with 
her. Trundle up to the window here, old lounge ! 
you are almost as good as a grandmother. Steady 
there ! broken-legged table. You have gone limp- 
ing ever since I knew you ; don't fail me to-night. 
Shine softly, Kerosena, next of kin to the sun, 
true monarch of mundane lights ! calmly superior 
to the flickering of all the fluids, and the ghastli- 
ness of all the gases, though it must be confessed 
you don't hold out half as long as you used when 
first your yellow banner was unfurled. Shine 
softly to-night, and light my happy feet through 
the Walden woods, along the Walden shores, 
where a philosopher sits in solitary state. He shall 
keep me awake by the Walden shore till the moon 
and the shadow meet. How tranquil sits the 
philosopher, how grandly rings the man ! Here, 



GALA-DAYS. 15 

4- 

in his homespun house, the squirrels dick under 
his feet, the woodchucks devour his beans, and the 
loon laughs on the lake. Here rich men come, 
and cannot hide their lankness and their poverty. 
Here poor men come, and their gold shines 
through their rags. Hither comes the poet, and 
the house is too narrow for their thoughts, and the 
rough walls ring with lusty laughter. O happy 
Walden wood and woodland lake, did you thrill 
through all your luminous aisles and all your 
listening shores for the man that wandered there ? 
Is it begun ? Not yet. The kitchen clock has 
but just struck eleven, and my watch lacks ten 
minutes of that. What if the astronomers made 
a mistake in their calculations, and the almanacs 
are wrong, and the eclipse shall not come off? 
Would it be strange ? Would it not be stranger 
if it were not so ?/'How can a being, standing on 
one little ball, spinning forever around and around 
among millions of other balls larger and smaller, 
whirling breathlessly the same endless waltz, — 
hoAv can he trace out their paths, and foretell their 
conjunctions ? ,' How can a puny creature fastened 
down to one world, able to lift himself but a few 
paltry feet above, to dig but a few paltry feet 
below its surface, utterly unable to divine what 
shall happen to himself in the next moment, — • 
how can he thrust out his hand into inconceivable 
space, and anticipate the silent fiiture ? How can 
his feeble eye detect the quiver of a world ^ How 



16 GALA-DAYS. 

« 

can his slender strength weigh the mountains in 
scales, and the hills in a balance ? And yet it is. 
Wonderful is the Power that framed all these 
spheres, and sent them on their great errands ; but 
more wonderful still the Power that gave to finite 
mind its power, to stand on one little point, and 
sweep the whole circle of the skies. Almost as 
marvellous is it that man, being man, can divine 
the universe, as that God, being God, could devise 
it. Cycles of years go by. Suns and moons and 
stars tread their mysterious rounds, but steady 
eyes are following them into the awful distances, 
steady hands are marking their eternal courses. 
Their multiplied motions shall yet be resolved into 
harmony, and so the music of the spheres shall 
chime with the angels' song, " Glory to God in 
the highest I" 

Is it begun ? Not yet. 

No wonder that eclipses were a terror to men 
before Science came queening it through the uni- 
verse, compelling all these fearful sights and great 
signs into her triumphal train, and commanding 
us to be no longer afraid of our own shadow. 
The sure and steadfast Moon, shuddering from the 
fulness of her splendor into wild and ghostly 
darkness, might well wake strange apprehensions 
She is reeling in convulsive agony. She is sick- 
enino; and swoonino; in the death-struo-ffle. The 
principalities and powers of darkness, the eternal 
foes of^men, are working their baleful spell with 



GALA-DAYS. 17 

terrible success to cast the sweet Moon from her 
beautiful path, and force her to work woe and 
disaster upon the earth. Some fell monster, 
roaming through the heavens, seeking whom he 
may devour, — some dragon, " monstrous, horri- 
ble, and vaste," whom no Redcrosse Knight shall 
pierce with his trenchand blade, is swallowing 
with giant gulps the writhing victim. Blow shrill 
and loud your bugle blasts ! Beat with fierce 
clangor your brazen cymbals ! Push up wild 
shrieks, and groans, and horrid cries, 

" That all the woods may answer, and your echoes ring," 

and the foul fiend perchance be scared away by 
deafening din. 

O, sad for those who lived before the ghouls 
were disinherited ; for whom the woods and wa- 
ters, and the deep places, were peopled with 
mighty, mysterious foes ; who saw evil spirits in 
the earth forces, and turned her gold into con- 
suming fire. For us, later born. Science has 
dived into the caverns, and scaled the heights, 
and fathomed the depths, forcing from coy yet 
willing Nature the solution of her own problems, 
and showing us everywhere, God. We are not 
the children of fate, trembling at the frown of 
fairies and witches and gnomes, but the children 
of our Father. If we ascend up into heaven, he 
is there. If we take the wings of the morning, 
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even 



18 GALA-DAYS. 

there shall his hand lead, and his right hand 
hold. 

Is it begun ? Not — well, I don't know, 
though. Something seems to be happening up 
in the northwest corner. Certainly, a bit of that 
round disk has been shaved off. I will wait five 
minutes. Yes, the battle is begun. The shadow 
advances. The moon yields. But there are 
watchers in the heaven as well as in the earth. 
There is sympathy in the skies. Up floats an 
argosy of compassionate clouds, and fling their 
fleecy veil around the pallid moon, and bear her 
softly on their snowy bosoms. But she moves 
on, impelled. She sweeps beyond the sad clouds. 
Deeper and deeper into the darkness. Closer 
and closer the Shadow clutches her in his inexor- 
able arms. Wan and weird becomes her face, 
wrathful and wild the astonished winds ; and for 
all her science and her faith, the Earth trembles 
in the night, and a hush of awe quivers through 
the angry, agitated air. On, still on, till the fair 
and smiling moon is but a dull and tawny orb, 
with no beauty to be desired ; on, still on, till 
even that cold, coppery light wanes into sullen 
darkness. Whether it is a cloud kindly hiding 
the humbled queen, or whether the queen is in- 
deed merged in the abyss of the Shadow, I cannot 
tell, and it is dismal waiting to see. The wildness 
is gone with the moon, and there is nothing left 
but a dark night. I wonder how long before she 



GALA-DAYS. 19 

will reappear? Are the people in the moon star- 
ing through an eclipse of the sun ? I should like 
to see her come out again, and clothe herself in 
splendor. I think I will go back to Walden. 
Ah ! even my philosopher, aping Homer, nods. 
It shimmers a little, on the lake, among the moun- 
tains — of the moon. 

I declare ! I believe I have been asleep. 
What of it ? It is just as well. I have no 
doubt the moon will come out again all right, — 
which is more than I shall do if I go on in this 
way. I feel already as if the top of my head 
was coming off. Once I was very unhappy, and 
I sat up all night to make the most of it. It was 
many hundred years ago, when I was younger 
than I am now, and /did not know that misery 
was not a thing to be caressed and cosseted and 
coddled, but a thing to be taken, neck and heels, 
and turned out doors./ So I sat up to revel in 
the ecstasy of woe. I went along swimmingly 
into the little hours, but by two o'clock there was 
a great sanieness about it, and I grew desperately 
sleepy. I was not going to give it up, however, 
so I shocked myself into a torpid animation with 
a cold bath, it being mid-winter, and betwixt bath 
and bathos, managed to keep agoing till daylight. 
Once since then I was very happy, and could not 
keep my eyes shut. Those are the only two 
times I ever sat up all night, and, on the whole, I 
think I will go to bed ; wherefore, O people on 



20 GALA-DAYS. 

the earth, marking eagerly the moon's eclipse, 
and O people on the moon, crowding your craggy 
hills to see an eclipse of the sun. Good night ! 

Then the lost June came back. Frost melted 
out of the air, summer melted in, and my book 
beckoned me onward with a commanding gesture. 
Consequently I took my trunk, Halicarnassus his 
cane, and we started on our travels. But the 
shadow of the eclipse hung over us still. An 
evil omen came in the beginning. Just as I was 
stepping into the car, I observed a violent smoke 
issuing from under it. I started back in alarm. 

" They are only gettmg up steam," said Hali- 
carnassus. " Always do, when they start." 

" I know better ! " I answered briskly, for there 
was no time to be circumlocutional. " They don't 
get up steam under the cars." 

" Why not ? Bet a sixpence you could n't get 
Uncle Cain's Dobbin out of his jog-trot without 
building a fire under him." 

" I know that wheel is on fire," I said, not to be 
turned from the direct and certain line of assertion 
into the winding ways of argument. 

"No matter," replied Halicarnassus, conceding 
everything, "we 'are insured." 

Upon the strength of which consolatory informa- 
tion I went in. By and by a man entered and 
took a seat in front of us. " The box is all afire," 
chuckled he to his neighbor, as if it were a fine 
joke. By and by several people who had been 



GALA-DA YS. • 21 

looking out of the windows drew in their heads, 
rose, and went into the next car. 

"What do you suppose they did that for?" I 
asked Hahcarnassus. 

" More aristocratical. Belong to old families. 
This is a new car, don't you see ? We are par- 
venus. ^^ 

'' Nothing of the sort," I rejoined. " This car 
is on fire, and they have gone into the next one so 
as not to be burned up." 

" They are not going to write books, and can 
afford to run away from adventures." 

"But suppose I am burned up in my adven- 
ture ? " 

" Obviously, then, your book will end in smoke." 

I ceased to talk, for I was provoked at his indif- 
ference. I leave every impartial mind to judge 
for itself whether the circumstances were such as 
to warrant composure. To be sure, somebody 
said the car was to be left at Jeru ; but Jeru was 
eight miles away, and any quantity of mischief 
might be done before we reached it, — if indeed 
we were not prevented from reaching it altogether. 
It was a mere question of dynamics. Would dry 
wood be able to hold its own against a raging fire 
for half an hour ? Of course the conductor 
thought it would ; but even conductors are not 
infallible ; and you may imagine how comfortable 
it was to sit and know that a fire was in full blast 
beneath you, and to look down every few minutes 



22 • GALA-DAYS. 

expecting to see the flames forking up under your- 
feet. I confess I was not without something like 
a hope that one tongue of the devouring element 
would flare up far enough to give Halicarnassus a 
start ; but it did not. No casualty occurred. We 
reached Jeru in safety ; but that does not prove 
that there was no danger, or that indifference was 
anything but the most foolish hardihood. If our 
burning car had been in mid-ocean, serenity would 
have been sublimity, but to stay in the midst of 
peril when two steps would take one out of it is 
idiocy. And that there was peril is conclusively 
shown by the fact that the very next day the 
Eastern Railroad Depot took fire and w^as burned 
to the ground. I have in my own mind no doubt 
that it was a continuation of the same fire, and if 
w^e had stayed in the car much longer, we should 
have shared the same fate. 

We found Jeru to be a pleasant city, with only 
one fault : the inhabitants will crowd into a car 
before passengers can get out; consequently the 
heads of the two columns collide near the car- 
door, and there is a general choke. Otherwise 
Jeru is a delightful city. It is famous for its beau- 
tiful women. Its railroad-station is a mag-nificent 
piece of architecture. Its men are retired East- 
India merchants. Everybody in Jeru is rich and 
has real estate. The houses in Jeru are three 
stories high and face on the Common. People in 
Jeru are well-dressed and well-bred, and they all 
came over in the Mayflower. 



GALA-DA YS. 23 

We stopped in Jeru five minutes. 

When we were ready to continue our travels, 
Halicarnassus seceded into the smoking-car, and 
while the engine was shrieking off its inertia, a 
small boy, laboring under great agitation, hurried 
in, darted up to me, and, thrusting a pinchbeck 
ring with a pink glass in it into my face, exclaimed, 
in a hoarse whisper, — 

" A beautiful ring, ma'am ! I Ve just picked it 
up. Can't stop to find the owner. Worth a dol- 
lar, ma'am; but if you'll give me fifty cents — " 

"Boy!" 

I rose fiercely, convulsively, in my seat, drew 
one long breath, but whether he thought I was 
going to kill him, — I dare say I looked it, — or 
whether he saw a sheriff behind, or a phantom gal- 
lows before, I know not ; but without waiting for 
the thunderbolt to strike, he rushed from the car 
as precipitately as he had rushed in. I was angry, 
— not because I was to have been cheated, for I 
have been repeatedly and atrociously cheated and 
only smiled, but because the rascal dared attempt 
on me such a threadbare, ragged, shoddy trick as 
that. Do I look like a rough-hewn, unseasoned 
backwoodsman ? Have I the air of never having 
read a newspaper ? Is there a patent innocence of 
eye-teeth in my demeanor? OJeru! Jeru! Some- 
where in your virtuous bosom you are nourishing 
a viper, for I have felt his fangs. Woe unto you, 
if you do not strangle him before he develops into 



24 GALA-DAYS. 

mature anacondaism ! In point of natural history 
I am not sure that vipers do grow up anacondas, 
but for the purposes of moral philosophy the de- 
velopment theory answers perfectly well. 

In Boston we had three hours to spare ; so we 
sent our luggage — that is, my trunk — to the 
Worcester Depot, and walked leisurely ourselves. 
I had a little shopping to do, to complete my outfit 
for the journey, — a very little shopping, — only a 
nightcap or two. Ordinarily such a thing is a 
matter of small moment, but in my case the 
subject had swollen into unnatural dimensions. 
Nightcaps are not generally considered healthy, — 
at least not by physicians. Nature has given to 
the head its sufficient and appropriate covering, 
the hair. Anything more than this injures the 
head, by confining the heat, preventing the sooth- 
ing, cooling contact of air, and so deranging the 
circulation of the blood. Therefore I have always 
heeded the dictates of Nature, which I have sup- 
posed to be to brush out the hair thoroughly at 
night and let it fly. But there are serious disad- 
vantages connected with this course. /For Nature 
will be sure to whisk the hair away from your 
ears where you want it, and into your eyes where 
you don't want it, besides crowning you with mag- 
nificent disorder in the morning./ But as I have 
always believed that no evil exists without its 
remedy, I had long been exercising my inventive 
genius in attempts to produce a head-gear which 



GALA-DAYS. 2$ 

should at once protect the ears, confine the hair, 
and let the skull alone. I regret to say that my 
experiments were an utter failure, notwithstand- 
ing the amount of science and skill brought to bear 
upon them. One idea lay at the basis of all my 
endeavors. Every combination, however elabo- 
rate or intricate, resolved into its simplest ele- 
ments, consisted of a pair of rosettes laterally to 
keep the ears warm, a bag posteriorly to put the 
hair into, and some kind of a string somewhere to 
hold the machine together. Every possible shape 
into whicli lace or muslin or sheeting could be cut 
or plaited or sewed or twisted, into which crewel 
or cord could be crocheted or netted or tatted, I 
make bold to declare was essayed, until things 
came to such a pass that every odd bit of dry 
goods lying round the house was, in the absence 
of any positive testimony on the subject, assumed 
to be one of my nightcaps, — an utterly baseless 
assumption, because my achievements never went 
so far as concrete capuality, but stopped short in 
the later stages of abstract idealism. However, 
prejudice is stronger than truth ; and, as I said, 
every fragment of every fabric that could not give 
an account of itself was charged with being a 
nightcap till it was proved to be a dish-cloth or a 
cart-rope. I at length surrendered at discretion, 
and remembered that somewhere in my reading I 
had met with exquisite lace caps, and I did not 
know but that from the combined fineness and 

2 



26 GALA-DAYS. 

strength of their material they might answer the 
purpose, even if in form they should not be every- 
thing that was desirable, — and I determined to 
ascertain, if possible, whether such things existed 
anywhere out of poetry. 

As you perceive, therefore, my Boston shopping 
was not every-day trading. It was to mark the 
abandonment of an old and the inauguration of a 
new line of policy. Thus it was with no ordinary 
interest that I looked carefully at all the shops, and 
when I found one that seemed to hold out a pos- 
sibility of nightcaps, I went in. Halicarnassus 
obeyed the hint which I pricked into him with 
the point of my parasol, and stopped outside./ The 
one place in the world where a man has no business 
to be is the inside of a dry-goods shop. He never 
looks and never is so big and bungling as there. A 
woman skips from silk to muslin, from muslin to 
ribbons, from ribbons to table-cloths, with the grace 
and agility of a bird. She glides in and out among 
crowds of her sex, steers sweepingly clear of all ob- 
stacles, and emerges triumphant. A man enters, 
and immediately becomes all boots and elbows. 
He needs as much room to turn round in as the 
English iron-clad Warrior, and it t^tkes him about 
as long. He treads on all the flounces, runs against 
all the clerks, knocks over all the children, and is 
generally under-foot. If he gets an idea into his 
head, a Nims's battery cannot dislodge it. You 
thought of buying a shawl ; but a thousand consid- 



GALA-DAYS. 27 

erations, in the shape of raglans, cloaks, talmas, 
pea-jackets, induce you to modify your views. He 
>stands by you. He hears all your inquiries and all 
the clerk's suggestions. The whole process of your 
reasoning is visible to his naked eye. He sees the 
sack or visite or cape put upon your shoulders and 
you walking off in it, and when you are half-way 
home, he will mutter, in stupid amazement, '' I 
thought you were going to buy a shawl ! '■ It is 
enough to drive one wild. 

No ! Halicarnassus is absurd and mulish in 
many things, but he knows I w^ill not be ham- 
pered with him when I am shopping, and he obeys 
the smallest hint, and stops outside. 

To be sure he puts my temper on the rack by 
standing with his hands in his pockets, or by look- 
ing meek, or likely as not peering into the shop- 
door after me with great staring eyes and parted 
lips ; and this is the most provoking of all. If 
there is anything vulgar, slipshod, and shiftless, it 
is a man lounging about with his hands in his ' 
pockets. If you have paws, stow them away ; 
but if you are endow^ed with hands, learn to carry 
them properly, or else cut them off. Nor can I 
abide a man's looking as if he were under control. 
I wish him to be submissive, but I don't wish him 
to look so. He shall do just as he is bidden, but 
he shall carry himself like the man and monarch 
he was made to be. Let him stay where he is put, 
yet not as if he were put there, but as if he had 



28 GALA-DAYS. 

taken his position deliberately. But, of all things, 
to have a man act as if he were a clod just emerged 
for the first time from his own barnyard ! Upon 
this occasion, however, I was too much absorbed 
in my errand to note anybody's demeanor, and I 
threaded straightway the crowd of customers, went 
up to the counter, and inquired in a clear voice, — 

" Have you lace nightcaps ? " 

The clerk looked at me with a troubled, bewil- 
dered glance, and made no reply. I supposed he 
had not understood me, and repeated the question. 
Then he answered, dubiously, — 

" We have breakfast-caps." 

It was my turn to look bewildered. What had 
I to do with breakfast-caps ? What connection was 
there between my question and his answer? What 
field was there for any further inquiry ? " Have 
you ox- bows ? " imagine a farmer to ask. " We 
have rainbows," says the shopman. "Have you 
cameo-pins ? " inquires the elegant Mrs. Jenkins. 
" We have linchpins." " Have you young apple- 
trees ? " asks the nursery-man. " We have whiffle- 
trees." If I had wanted breakfast-caps, should n't 
I have asked for breakfast-caps ? Or do the Bos- 
ton people take their breakfast at one o'clock in 
the morning ? I concluded that the man was de- 
mented, and marched out of the shop. When I 
laid the matter before Halicarnassus, the following 
interesting colloquy took place. 

Z " What do you suppose it meant ? " 



GALA-DAYS. 29 

jS". " He took you for a North American In- 
dian." 

I. " What do you mean ? " 

H. " He did not understand your patois.''* 

I. '' Wlmt patois ? '' 

'H. " Your squaw dialect. You should have 
asked for a bonnet de nuit.^^ 

I. "Why?" 

S^. " People never talk about nightcaps m 
good society." 

/. " Oh ! " 

I was very warm, and Halicarnassus said he was 
tired ; so he went into a restaurant and ordered 
strawberries, — that luscious fruit, quivering on 
the border-land of ambrosia and nectar. 

"Doubtless," says honest, quaint, delightful Isaac, 
— and he never spoke a truer word, — " doubtless 
God might have made a better berry than a straw- 
berry, but doubtless God never did." 

The bill of fare rated their excellence at fifteen 
cents. 

" Not unreasonable," I pantomimed. 

" Not if I pay for them," replied Halicarnassus. 

Then we sat and amused ourselves after the 
usual brilliant fashion of people who are waiting 
in hotel parlors, railroad-stations, and restaurants. 
We surveyed the gilding and the carpet and the 
mirrors and the curtains. We hazarded profound 
conjectures touching the people assembled. We 
studied the bill of fare as if it contained the secret 



80 - GALA-DAYS. 

of our army's delay upon the Potomac, and had 
just concluded that the first crop of strawberries 
was exhausted, and they were waiting for the sec- 
ond crop to grow, when Hebe hove in sight with 
her nectared ambrosia in a pair of cracked, browny- 
white saucers, with browny-green silver spoons. I 
poured out what professed to be cream, but proved 
very low-spirited milk, in which a few disheartened 
strawberries appeared rari nantes. I looked at 
them in dismay. Then curiosity smote me, and 
I counted them. Just fifteen. 

" Cent a piece," said Halicarnassus. 

I was not thinking of the cent, but I had 

promised myself a feast ; and what is a feast, sus- 

,' ceptible of enumeration ? Cleopatra was right. 

/ " That love " — and the same is true of straw- 

' berries — "is beggarly which can be reckoned." 

Infinity alone is glory. 

" Perhaps the quality will atone for the quan- 
tity," said Halicarnassus, scooping up at least half 
of his at one " arm-sweep." 

" How do they taste ? " I asked. 

" Rather coppery," he answered. 

" It is the spoons ! " I exclaimed, in a fright. 
" They are German silver ! You will be poi- 
soned ! " and knocked his out of his hand with 
such instinctive, sudden violence that it flew to 
the other side of the room, where an old gentle- 
man sat over his newspaper and dinner. 

He started, dropped his newspaper, and looked 



GALA-DA vs. 31 

around in a maze. Halicarnassus behaved beauti- 
fully, — I will give him the credit of it. He went 
on with my spoon and his strawberries as uncon- 
cernedly as if nothing had happened. I was con- 
scious that I blushed, but my face was in the 
shade, and nobody else knew it ; and to this day 
I have no doubt the old gentleman would have 
marvelled what sent that mysterious spoon rattling 
against his table and whizzing between his boots, 
had not Halicarnassus, when the uproar was over, 
conceived it his duty to go and pick up the spoon 
and apologize for the accident, lest the gentleman 
should fancy an intentional rudeness. Partly to 
reward him for his good behavior, partly because I 
never did think it worth while to make two bites 
of a cherry, and partly because I did not fancy- 
being poisoned, I gave my fifteen berries to him. 
He devoured them with evident relish. 

" Does my spoon taste as badly as yours ? " I 
asked. 

" My spoon ? " inquired he, innocently. 

"Yes. You said before that they tasted cop- 
pery." 

" I don't think," repHed this unprincipled man, 
— "I don't think it was the flavor of the spoon 
so much as of the coin which each berry repre- 
sented." 

If we could only have been at home ! 

I never made a more unsatisfactory investment 
in my life than the one I made in that restaurant. 



32 GALA-DAYS. 

I felt as if I had been swindled, and I said so to 
Halicarnassus. He remarked that there was 
plenty of cream and sugar. I answered curtly, 
that the cream was chiefly water, and the sugar 
chiefly flour ; but if they had been Simon Pure 
himself, was it anything but an aggravation of the 
offence to have them with nothing to eat them on ? 

" You might do as they do in France, — carry 
away what you don't eat, seeing you pay for it." 

" A pocketful of milk and water would be both 
dehghtful and serviceable ; but I might take the 
sugar," I added, with a sudden thought, upsetting 
the sugar-bowl into a " Boston Journal " which 
we had bought in the train. " I can never use it, 
but it will be a consolation to reflect on." 

Halicarnassus, who, though fertile in evil con- 
ceptions, lacks nerve to put them into execution, 
was somewhat startled at this sudden change of 
base. He had no idea that I should really act 
upon his suggestion, but I did. I bundled the 
sugar into my pocket with a grim satisfaction ; 
and Halicarnassus paid his thirty cents, looking — 
and feeling, as he afterwards told me — as if a 
policem^i's gripe were on his shoulders. If any 
restaurant in Boston recollects having been as- 
tonished at any time during the summer of 1862 
by an unaccountably empty sugar-bowl, I take 
this occasion to explain the phenomenon. I gave 
the sugar afterwards to a little beggar-girl, with 
a dime for a brace of lemons, and shook off the 



GALA-DAYS. 33 

dust of my feet against Boston at the " B. & W. 
E. R. D." 

Boston is a beautiful city, situated on a penin- 
sula at the head of Massachusetts- Bay. It has 
three streets : Cornhill, Washington, and Beacon 
Streets. It has a Common and a Frog-pond, and 
many sprightly squirrels. Its streets are straight, 
and cross each other like lines on a chess-board. 
It has a state-house, which is the finest edifice in 
the world or out of it. It has one church, the 
Old South, which was built, as its name indicates, 
before the Proclamation of Emancipation was 
issued. It has one bookstore, a lofty and imposing 
pile, of the Egyptian style (and date) of archi- 
tecture, on the corner of Washington and School 
Streets. It has one magazine, the " Atlantic 
Monthly," one daily newspaper, the " Boston 
Journal," one religious weekly, the " Congrega- 
tionalist," and one orator, whose name is Train, a 
model of chaste, compact, and classic elegance. 
In politics, it was a Webster Whig, till Whig and 
Webster both went down, when it fell apart and 
waited for something to turn up, — which proved 
to be drafting. Boston is called the Athens of 
America. Its men are solid. Its women wear 
their bonnets to bed, their nightcaps to breakfast, 
and talk Greek at dinner. I spent two hours and 
a half in Boston, and I know. 

We had a royal progress from Boston to Font- 
dale. Summer lay on the shining hills, and scat- 

2* C 



84 GALA-DAYS. 

tered benedictions. Plenty smiled up from a thou- 
sand fertile fields. Patient oxen, with their soft, 
deep eyes, trod heavily over mines of greater than 
Indian wealth. Kindly cows stood in the grateful 
shade of cathedral elms, and gave thanks to God 
in their dumb, fumbling way. Motherly, sleepy, 
stupid sheep lay on the plains, little lambs rollicked 
out their short-lived youth around them, and no 
premonition floated over from the adjoining pea- 
patch, nor any misgiving of approaching mutton 
marred their happy heyday. Straight through the 
piny forests, straight past the vocal orchards, right 
in among the robins and the jays and the startled 
thrushes, we dashed inexorable, and made harsh 
dissonance in the wild-wood orchestra ; but not 
for that was the music hushed, nor did one color 
fade. Brooks leaped in headlong chase down the 
furrowed sides of gray old rocks, and glided whis- 
pering beneath the sorrowful willows. Old trees 
renewed their youth in the slight, tenacious grasp 
of many a tremulous tendril, and, leaping lightly 
above their topmost heights, vine laughed to vine, 
swaying dreamily in the summer air ; and not a 
vine nor brook nor hill nor forest but sent up a 
sweet-smelling incense to its Maker. Not an ox 
or cow or lamb or bird living its own dim life but 
lent its charm of unconscious grace to the great 
picture that unfolded itself, mile after mile, in ever 
fresher loveliness to ever unsated eyes. Well 
might the morning stars sing together, and all the 



GALA-DAYS. 35 

sons of God shout for joy, when first this grand 
and perfect world swung free from its moorings, 
flung out its spotless banner, and sailed majestic 
down the thronging skies. Yet, though but once 
God spoke the world to life, the miracle of crea- 
tion is still incomplete. / New every spring-time, 
fresh every summer, the earth comes forth as a 
bride adorned for her husband. / Not only in the 
gray dawn of our history, but now in the full 
brightness of its noonday, may we hear the voice 
of the Lord walking in the garden. I look out 
upon the gray degraded fields left naked of the 
kindly snow, and inwardly ask. Can these dry 
bones live again ? And while the question is yet 
trembling on my lips, lo ! a Spirit breathes upon 
the earth, and beauty thrills into bloom. Who 
shall lack faith in man's redemption, when every 
year the earth is redeemed by unseen hands, and 
death is lost in resurrection ?^ 

To Fontdale sitting among her beautiful meadows 
we are borne swiftly on. There we must tarry for 
the night, for I will not travel in the dark when I 
can help it. I love it. There is no solitude in the 
world, or at least I have never felt any, like stand- 
ing alone in the doorway of the rear car on a dark 
night, and rushing on through the darkness, — 
darkness, darkness everywhere, and if one could 
only be sure of rushing on till daylight doth ap- 
pear ! But with the frightful and not remote pos- 
sibihty of bringing up in a crash and being buried 



36 GALA-DAYS. 

under a general huddle, one prefers daylight. You 
may not be able to get out of the huddle even by 
dayhght ; but you will at least know where you 
are, if there is anything of you left. So at Font- 
dale Halicarnassus branches off temporarily on a 
business errand, and I stop for the night a-cous- 
ining. 

You object to this ? Some people do. For my 
part, I like it. You say you will not turn your 
own house or your friend's house into a hotel. If 
people wish to see you, let them come and make a 
visit ; if you wish to see them, you will go and 
make them one ; but this touch and go, — what is 
it worth ? O foolish Galatians ! much every way. 
For don't you see, supposing the people are people 
you don't like, how much better it is to have them 
come and sleep or dine and be gone than to have 
them before your face and eyes for a week ? An 
ill that is temporary is tolerable. You could enter- 
tain the Evil One himself, if you were sure he 
would go away after dinner. The trouble about 
him is not so much that he comes as that he won't 
•go. He hangs around. If you once open your 
door to him, there is no getting rid of him ; and 
some of his followers, it must be confessed, are just 
like him. You must resist them both, or they will 
never flee. But if they do flee after a day's tarry, 
do not com^Dlain. You protest against turning your 
house into a hotel. Why, the hotelry is the least 
irksome part of the whole business, when your 



GALA-DAYS. 37 

guests are uninteresting. It is not the supper or 
the bed that costs, but keeping people going after 
supper is over and before bed-time is come. Never 
complain, if you have nothing worse to do than to 
feed or house your guests for a day or an hour. 

On the other hand, if they are people you like, 
how much better to have them come so than not to 
come at all ! People cannot often make long visits, 
— people that are worth anything, — pet)ple who 
use life ; and they are the only ones that are worth 
anything. And if you cannot get your good 
things in the lump, are you going to refuse them 
altogether ? By no means. You are going to 
take them by driblets, and if you will only be 
sensible and not pout, but keep your tin pan right 
side up, you will find that golden showers will 
drizzle through all your life. So, with never a 
nugget in your chest, you shall die rich. If you 
can stop over-night with your friend, you have no 
sand-grain, but a very respectable boulder. For a 
night is infinite. Daytime is well enough for busi- 
ness, but it is little worth for happiness. You sit 
down to a book, to a picture, to a friend, and the 
first you know it is time to get dinner, or time to 
eat it, or time for the train, or you must put out 
your dried apples, or set the bread to rising, or 
something breaks in impertinently and chokes you 
off at flood-tide. But the night has no end. Every- 
thing is done but that which you would be forever 
doing. The curtains are drawn, the lamp is lighted 



38 GALA-DAYS. 

and veiled into exquisite soft shadowiness. All the 
world is far off. All its din and dole strike into the 
bank of darkness that envelops you and are lost to 
your tranced sense. In all the world are only your 
friend and you, and then you strike out your oars, 
silver-sounding, into the shoreless night. 

But the night comes to an end, you say. No, 
it does not. It is you that come to an end. You 
grow sleepy, clod that you are. But as you don't 
think, when you begin, that you ever shall grow 
sleepy, it is just the same as if you never did. For 
you have no foreshadow of an inevitable termina- 
tion to your rapture, and so practically your night 
has no limit. It is fastened at one end to the sun- 
set, but the other end floats off into eternity. And 
there really is no abrupt termination. You roll 
down the inclined plane of your social happiness 
into the bosom of another happiness, — sleep. 
Sleep for the sleepy is bliss just as truly as soci- 
ety to the lonely. What in the distance would 
have seemed Purgatory, once reached, is Para- 
dise, and your happiness is continuous. Just as 
it is in mending. Short-sighted, superficial, unre- 
flecting people have a way — which in time fos- 
silizes into a principle — of mending everything as 
soon as it comes up from the wash, — a very un- 
thrifty, uneconomical habit, if you use the words 
thrift and economy in the only way in which they 
ought to be used, namely, as applied to what is 
worth economizing. Time, happiness, hfe, these 



GALA-DAYS. 39 

are the only things to be thrifty about. But I see 
people working and worrying over quince-marma- 
lade and tucked petticoats and embroidered chair- 
covers, things that perish with the using and leave 
the user worse than they found him. This I call 
■waste and wicked prodigality. Life is too short 
to permit us to fret about matters of no impor- 
tance. Where these things can minister to the 
mind and heart, they are a part of the soul's 
furniture ; but where they only pamper the ap- 
petite or the vanity, or any foolish and hurtful 
lust, they are foolish and hurtful. Be thrifty of 
comfort. ' Never allow an opportunity for cheer, 
for pleasure, for intelligence, for benevolence, for 
any kind of good, to go unimproved. Consider 
seriously whether the syrup of your preserves or 
the juices of your own soul will do the most to 
serve your race. It may be that they are compat- 
ible, — that the concoction of the one shall provide 
the ascending sap of the other ; but if it is not so, 
if one must be sacrificed, do not hesitate a moment 
as to which it shall be. If a peach does not become 
sweetmeat, it will become something, it will not 
stay a withered, unsightly peach ; but for souls 
there is no transmio-ration out of fables. Once a 
soul, forever a soul, — mean or mighty, shrivelled or 
full, it is for you to say. Money, land, luxury, so 
far as they are money, land, and luxury, are worth- 
less. It is only as fast and as far as they are turned 
into life that they acquire value. 



40 GALA-DAYS. 

So you are thriftless when you eagerly seize the 
first opportunity to fritter away your time over 
old clothes. You precipitate yourself unnecessa- 
rily against a disagreeable thing. For you are not 
going to put your stockings on. Perhaps you will 
hot need your buttons for a week, and in a week 
you may have passed beyond the jurisdiction of 
buttons. But even if you should not, let the but- 
tons and the holes alone all the same. For, first, 
the pleasant and profitable thing which you will" 
do instead is a funded capital, which will roll you 
up a perpetual interest ; and secondly, the disa- 
greeable duty is forever abolished. I say forever, 
because, when you have gone without the button 
awhile, the inconvenience it occasions will recon- 
cile you to the necessity of sewing it on, — will 
even go further, and make it a positive relief 
amounting to positive pleasure. Besides, every 
time you use it, for a long while after, you will 
have a delicious sense of satisfaction, such as ac- 
companies the sudden complete cessation of a dull, 
continuous pain. Thus what was at best charac- 
terless routine, and most likely an exasperation, is 
turned into actual delight, and adds to the sum of 
life. This is thrift. This is economy. But, alas ! 
few people understand' the art of living. They 
strive after system, wholeness, buttons, and neg-, 
lect the weightier matters of the higher law. 

1 wonder how I got here, or how I am to 

get back again. I started for Fontdale, and I find 



GALA-DAYS. 41 

myself in a mending-basket. As I know no good 
in tracing the same road back, we may as well 
strike a bee-line and begin new at Fontdale. 
We stopped at Fontdale a-cousining. I have a 

veil, a beautiful have, did I say ? Alas ! Troy 

was. But I must not anticipate a beautiful 

veil of brown tissue, none of your woolleny, gruff 
fabrics, fit only for penance, but a silken, gossamery 
cloud, soft as a baby's cheek. Yet everybody fleers 
at it. Everybody has a joke about it. Everybody 
looks at it, and holds it out at arms' length, and 
shakes it, and makes great eyes at it, and says, 
" What in the world — " and ends with a huge, 
bouncing laugh. Why ? One is ashamed of hu- 
man nature at being forced to confess. Because, 
to use a Gulliverism, it is longer by the breadth of 
my nail than any of its contemporaries. In fact, it 
is two yards long. That is all. Halicarnassus fired 
the first gun at it by saying that its length was to 
enable one end of it to remain at home while the 
other end went with me, so that neither of us 
should get lost.) , This is an allusion to a habit 
which I and my property have of finding our- 
selves individually and collectively left in the 
lurch. After this initial shot, everybody consid- 
ered himself at liberty to let off his rusty old blun- 
derbuss, and there was a constant peppering. But 
my veil never lowered its colors nor curtailed its 
resources. Alas ! what ridicule and contumely 
failed to effect, destiny accomplished. Softness 



42 GALA-DAYS. 

and plenitude are no shields against the shafts' 
of fate. 

I went into the station waiting-room to write a 
note. I laid my bonnet, my veil, my packages 
upon the table. I wrote my note. I went away. 
The next morning, when I would have arrayed 
myself to resume my journey, there was no veil. 
I remembered that I had taken it into the station 
the night before, and that I had not taken it out. 
At the station we inquired of the waiting-woman 
concerning it. It is as much as your life is worth 
to ask these people about lost articles. They take 
it for granted at the first blush that you mean to 
accuse them of stealing. " Have you seen a 
brown veil lying about anywhere ? " asked Crene, 
her sweet bird-voice warbling out from her sweet 
rose-hps. " No, I 'a'n't seen nothin' of it," says 
Gnome, with magnificent indifference. 

" It was lost here last night," continues Crene, 
in a soliloquizing undertone, pushing investigating 
glances beneath the sofas. 

" I do' know nothin' about it. I 'a'n't took 
it " ; and the Gnome tosses her head back defi- 
antly. " I seen the lady when she was a-writin' 
of her letter, and when she went out ther' wa'n't 
nothin' left on the table but a hangkerchuf, and 
that wa'n't hern. I do' know nothin' about it, 
nor I 'a'n't seen nothin' of it." 

O no, my Gnome, you knew nothing of it J 
you did not take it. But since no one accused 



GALA-DAYS. 43 

you, or even suspected you, why could you not 
have been less aggressive and more sympathetic 
in your assertions ? But we will plough no longer 
in that field. The ploughshare has struck against 
a rock and grits, denting its edge in vain. My 
veil is gone, — my ample, historic, heroic veil. 
There is a woman in Fontdale who breathes air 
filtered through — I will not say stolen tissue, but 
certainly through tissue which was obtained with- 
out rendering its owner any fair equivalent. Does 
not every breeze that softly stirs its fluttering folds 
say to her, " O friend, this veil is not yours, not 
yours," and still sighingly, " not yours ! Up 
among the northern hills, yonder towards the sun- 
set, sits the owner, sorrowful, weeping, wailing " ? 
I believe I am wading out into the Sally Waters 
of Mother Goosery ; but, prose or poetry, some- 
where a woman, — and because nobody of taste 
could surreptitiously possess herself of my veil, I 
have no doubt that she cut it incontinently into 
two equal parts, and gave one to her sister, and 
that there are two women, — nay, since niggardly 
souls have no sense of grandeur, and will shave 
down to microscopic dimensions, it is every way 
probable that she divided it into three unequal 
parts, and took three quarters of a yard for her- 
self, three quarters for her sister, and gave the 
remaining half-yard to her daughter, and that at 
this very moment there are two women and a little 
girl taking their walks abroad under the silken 



1 



44 GALA-DAYS. 

shadows of my veil ! And yet there are people 
who profess to disbelieve in total depravity. , 

Nor did the veil walk away alone. My trunk 
became imbued with the spirit of adventure, and 
branched off on its own account up somewhere 
into Vermont. I suppose it would have kept on 
and reached perhaps the North Pole by this time, 
had not Crene's dark eyes, — so pretty to look at 
that one instinctively feels they ought not to be 
good for anything, if a just impartiality is to be 
maintained, but they are, — had not Crene's dark 
eyes seen it tilting into a baggage-crate, and trun- 
dling oif towards the Green Mountains, but too 
late. Of course there was a formidable hitch in 
the programme. A court of justice was impro- 
vised on the car-steps. I was the plaintiff, Crene 
chief evidence, baggage-master both defendant and 
examining-counsel. The case did not admit of 
a doubt. There was the little insurmountable 
check, whose brazen lips could speak no lie. 

" Keep hold of that," whispered Crene, and a 
yoke of oxen could not have drawn it from me. 

" You are sure you had it marked for Fontdale," 
says INIr. Baggage-master. 

I hold the impracticable check before his eyes 
in silence. 

" Yes, well, it must have gone on to Albany." 

*' But it went away on that track," says Crene. 

" Could n't have gone on that track. Of course 
they wouldn't have carried it away over there 
just to make it go wrong." 



GALA-DAYS. 45 

For me, I am easily persuaded and dissuaded. 
If he had told me that it must have gone in such 
a direction, that it was a moral and mental Impos- 
sibility it should have gone in any other, and have 
said it times enough, with a certain confidence 
and contempt of any other contingency, I should 
gradually have lost faith in my own eyes, and 
said, " Well, I suppose it did." But Crene is 
not to be asserted into yielding one inch, and 
insists that the trunk went to Vermont and not 
to New York, and is thoroughly unmanageable. 
Then the baggage-master, in anguish of soul, trots 
out his subordinates, one after another, — 

" Is this the man that wheeled the trunk away ? 
Is this ? Is this ? " 

The brawny-armed fellows hang back, and 
scowl, and muffle words In a very suspicious man- 
ner, and protest they won't be got into a scrape. 
But Crene has no scrape for them. She cannot 
swear to their identity, bhe had eyes only for 
the trunk. 

" Well," says Baggage-man, at his wits' end, 
" you let me take your check, and I '11 send the 
trunk on by express, when it comes." 

I pity him, and relax my clutch. 

" No," whispers Crene ; " as long as you have 
your check, you as good as have your trunk ; but 
when you give that up, you have nothing. Keep 
that till you see your trunk." 

My clutch re-tightens. 



i 



46 GALA-DAYS. 

" At any rate, you can wait till the next train, 
and see if does n't come back. You '11 get to your 
journey's end just as soon." 

" Shall I ? Well, I will," compliant as usual. 

" No," interposes my good genius again. " Men 
are always saying that a woman never goes when 
she engages to go. She is always a train later or 
a train earlier, and you can't meet her." 

Pliant to the last touch, I say aloud, — 

" No, I must go in this train " ; and so I go, 
trunkless and crestfallen, to meet Halicarnassus. 

It is a dismal day, and Crene, to comfort me, 
puts into my hands two books as companions by 
the way. They are Coventry Patmore's *' Angel 
in the House," " The Espousals and the Be- 
trothal." I do not approve of reading in the 
cars ; but without is a dense, white, unvarying 
fog, and within my heart it is not clear sunshine. 
So I turn to my books. 

Did any one ever read them before? Some- 
body wrote a vile review of them once, and gave 
the idea of a very puerile, ridiculous, apron-stringy 
attempt at poetry. Whoever wrote that notice 
ought to be shot, for the books are charming, — 
pure and homely and householdy, yet not effemi- 
nate. Critics may sneer as much as they choose : 
it is such love as Vaughan's tliat Honorias value. 
Because a woman's nature is not proof against de- 
terioration, because a laro-e and Ions-continued 
infusion of gross blood, and perhaps even the mo- 

\ 



GALA-DAYS. 47 

notonous pressure of rough, pitiless, degrading 
circumstances, may displace, eat out, rub off the 
delicacy of a soul, may change its texture to un- 
natural coarseness and scatter ashes for beauty, 
women do exist, victims rather than culprits, 
coarse against their nature, hard, material, grasp- 
ing, the saddest sight humanity can see. Such a 
woman can accept coarse men. They may come 
courting on all fours, and she will not be shocked. 
But women in the natural state wish men to stand 
godlike erect, to tread majestically, and live deli- 
cately. Women do not often make an ado about 
this. They talk it over among themselves, and 
take men as they are. They quietly soften them 
down, and smooth them out, and polish them up, 
and make the best of them, and simply and sedu- 
lously shut their eyes and make believe there is n't 
any worst, or reason it away, — a great deal more 
than I should think they w^ould. But if you 
would see the qualities that a woman spontaneously 
loves, the expression, the tone, the bearing that 
thoroughly satisfies her self-respect, that not only 
secures her acquiescence, but arouses her enthu- 
siasm and commands her abdication, crucify the 
flesh, and read Coventry Patmore.> Not that he 
is the world's great poet, nor Arthur Vaughan the 
ideal man ; but this I do mean : that the delicacy, 
the spirituality of his love, the scrupulous respect- 
fulness of his demeanor, his unfeigned inward 
humility, as far removed from servility on the one 



48 GALA-DAYS. 

side as from assumption on the other, and less the 
opponent than the offspring of self-respect, his 
thorough gentleness, guilelessness, deference, his 
manly, unselfish homage, are such qualities, and 
such alone, as lead womanhood captive. Listen 
to me, you rattling, roaring, rollicking Ralph 
Roister Doisters, you calm, inevitable Gradgrinds, 
as smooth, as sharp, as bright as steel, and as soul- 
less, and you men, whoever, whatever, and wher- 
ever you are, with fibres of rope and nerves of 
wire, tliere is many and msLXij a woman who toler- 
ates you because she finds you, but tliere is noth- 
ing in her that ever goes out to seek you. Be not 
deceived by her placability. '' Here he is," she 
says to herself, *' and something must be done 
about it. Buried under Ossa and PeHon some- 
where he must be supposed to have a soul, and 
the sooner he is dug into the sooner it will be 
exhumed." So she digs. She would never have 
made you, nor of her own free-will elected you ; 
but being made, such as you are, and on her 
hands in one way or another, she carves and 
chisels, and strives to evoke from the block a 
breathing statue. She may succeed so far as that 
you shall become her Frankenstein, a great, sad, 
monstrous, incessant, inevitable caricature of her 
ideal, the monument at once, of her success and 
her failure, the object of her compassion, the 
intimate sorrow of her soul, a vast and dreadful 
form into which her creative power can breathe 



GALA-DAYS. 49 

the breath of Hfe, but not of sympathy. Per- 
haps she loves you with a remorseful, pitying, 
protesting love, and carries you on her shuddering 
shoulders to the grave. Probably, as she is good 
and wise, you will never find it out. A limpid 
brook ripples in beauty and bloom by the side of 
your muddy, stagnant selt-complacence, and you 
discern no essential difference. " Water 's water," 
you say, with your broad, stupid generalization, 
and go oozing along contentedly through peat-bogs 
and meadow-ditches, mounting, perhaps, in mo- 
ments of inspiration, to the moderate sublimity of 
a cranberry-meadow, but subsiding with entire 
satisfaction into a muck-puddle : and all the while 
the little brook that you patronize when you are 
full-fed, and snub when you are hungry, and look 
down upon always, — the little brook is singing its 
own melody through grove and orchard and sweet 
wild-wood, — singing with the birds and the 
blooms songs that you cannot hear ; but they are 
heard by the silent stars, singing on and on into a 
broader and deeper destiny, till it pours, one day, 
its last earthly note, and becomes forevermore the 
unutterable sea. 

And you are nothing but a ditch. 

No, my friend, Lucy will drive with you, and 
talk to you, and sing your songs ; she will take 
care of you, and pray for you, and cry when you 
go to the war ; if she is not your daughter or your 
sister, she will, perhaps, in a moment of weakness 



50 GALA-DAYS. 

or insanity, marry you ; she will be a faithful wife, 
and float you to the end ; but if you wish to be 
her love, her hero, her ideal, her delight, her 
spontaneity, her utter rest and ultimatum, you 
must attune your soul to fine issues, — you must 
bring out the angel in you, and keep the brute 
under. It is not that you shall stop making shoes, 
and begin to write poetry. That is just as much 
discrimination as you have. Tell you to be gentle, 
and you think we will have you dissolve into milk- 
and-water; tell you to be polite, and you infer 
hypocrisy; to be neat, and you leap over into 
dandyism, fancying all the while that bluster is 
manliness. No, sir. You may make shoes, you 
may run engines, you may carry coals ; you may 
blow the huntsman's horn, hurl the base-ball, fol- 
low the plough, smite the anvil ; your face may be 
brown, your veins knotted, your hands grimed ; 
and yet you may be a hero. And, on the other 
hand, you may write verses and be a clown. It 
is not necessary to feed on ambrosia in order to 
become divine ; nor shall one be accursed, though 
he drink of the ninefold Styx. The Israelites ate 
angels' food in the wilderness, and remained stiff- 
necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears. The 
white water-lily feeds on slime, and unfolds a 
heavenly glory. Come as the June morning 
comes. It has not picked its way daintily, pass- 
ing only among the roses. It has breathed up the 
whole earth. It has blown through the fields and 



GALA-DAYS. 51 

tiie barn-yards and all the common places of the 
land. It has shrunk from nothing. Its purity 
has breasted and overborne all things, and so min- 
gled and harmonized all that it sweeps around 
your forehead and sinks into your heart as soft and 
sweet and pure as the fragrancy of Paradise. So 
come you, rough from the world's rough work, 
with all out-door airs blowing around you, and all 
your earth-smells clinging to you, but with a fine 
inward grace, so strong, so sweet, so salubrious 
that it meets and masters all things, blending 
every faintest or foulest odor of earthliness into the 
grateful incense of a pure and lofty life. 

Thus I read and mused in the soft summer fog, 
and the first I knew the cars had stopped, I was 
standing on the platform, and Coventry and his 
knight were — where ? Wandering up and down 
csomewhere among the Berkshire hills. At some 
junction of roads, I suppose, I left them on the 
cushion, for I have never beheld them since. Tell 
me, O ye daughters of Berkshire ! have you seen 
them, — a princely pair, sore weary in your moun- 
tain-land, but regal still, through all their travel- 
stain? I pray you, entreat them hospitably, for 
their mission is " not of an age, but for all time." 




II 




HE descent from Patmore and poetry 

to New York is somewhat abrupt, not 

to say precipitous, but we made it in 

safety ; and so shall you, if you wiL 

be agile. 

New York is a pleasant little Dutch city, on a 
dot of island a few miles southwest of Massachu- 
setts. For a city entirely unobtrusive and unpre- 
tending, it has really great attractions and solid 
merit ; but the superior importance of other places 
will not permit me to tarry long within its hospi- 
table walls. In fact, we only arrived late at night, 
and departed early the next morning ; but even a 
six-hours sojourn gave me a solemn and " realiz- 
ing sense " of its marked worth, — for, when, 
tired and listless, I asked for a servant to assist 
me, the waiter said he would send the housekeep- 
er. Accordingly, when, a few moments after, it 
knocked at the door with light, light finger, (see 
De la Motte Fouque,) I drawled, " Come in," 
and the Queen of Sheba stood before me, clad in 



GALA'DAYS, 53 

purple and fine linen, with rings on her fingers 
and bells on her toes. I stared in dismay, and 
perceived myself rapidly transmigrating into a 
ridiculus mus. My gray and dingy travelling- 
dress grew abject, and burned into my soul like 
the tunic of Nessus. I should as soon have 
thought of asking Queen Victoria to brush out 
my hair as that fine lady in brocade silk and 
Mechlin lace. But she was good and gracious, 
and did not annihilate me on the spot, as she 
might easily have done, for which I shall thank 
her as long as I live. 

" You sent for me ? " she inquired, with the 
blandest accents imaginable. I can't tell a lie, 
pa, — you know I can't tell a lie ; besides, I had 
not time to make up one, and I said, " Yes," and 
then, of all stupid devices that could filter into my 
soggy brain, I must needs stammer out that I 
should like a few matches ! A pretty thiiig to 
bring a dowager duchess up nine pairs of stairs 
for! 

" I will ring the bell," she said, with a tender, 
reproachful sweetness and dignity, which conveyed 
without unkindness the severest rebuke tempered 
by womanly pity, and proceeded to instruct me 
in the nature and uses of the bell-rope, as she 
would any little dairy-maid who had heard only 
the chime of cow-bells all the days of her life. 
Then she sailed out of the room, serene and ma- 
jestic, like a seventy-four man-of-war, while I, a 



54 GALA-DAYS. 

squalid, salt-liay gunlow, (Venetian bllnd-ed into 
gondola,') first sank down in confusion, and then 
rose up in fury and brushed all the hair out of 
my head. 

" I declare," I said to Halicarnassus, when we 
were fairly beyond ear-shot of the city next 
morning, " I don't approve of sumptuary laws, 
and I Hke America to be the El Dorado of the 
poor man, and I go for the largest liberty of the 
individual ; but I do think there ought to be a 
clause in the Constitution providing that servants 
shall not be dressed and educated and accom- 
plished up to the point of making people uncom- 
fortable." 

" No," said Halicarnassus, sleepily ; " perhaps 
it was n't a servant." 

" Well," I said, having looked at it in that light 
silently for half an hour, and coming to the sur- 
face«in another place, " if I could dress and carry 
myself like that, I would not keep tavern." 

" Oh ! eh ? " yawning ; " who does ? " 

" Mrs. Astor. Of course nobody less rich than 
Mrs. Astor could go up-stairs and down-stairs and 
in my lady's chamber in Shiraz silk and gold of 
Ophir. Why, Cleopatra was nothing to her. I 
make no doubt she uses gold-dust for sugar in her 
coffee every morning; and as for the three mis- 
erable little wherries that Isabella furnished Co- 
lumbus, and historians have towed through their 
tomes ever since, if you know of anybody that 



1 



GALA-DAYS. 55 

has a continent he wishes to discover, send him 
to this housekeeper, and she can fit out a fleet of 
transports and Monitors for convoy with one of 
her bracelets." 

" I don't," said Halicarnassus, rubbing his eyes. 

" I only wish," I added, " that she would turn 
Rebel, so that government might confiscate her. 
Paper currency would go up* at once from the 
sudden influx of gold, and the credit of the 
country receive a new lease of life. She must be 
a liiieal descendant of Sir Roger de Coverley, for 
I am sure her finger sparkles with a hundred of 
his richest acres." 

Before bidding a final farewell to New York, I 
shall venture to make a sincjle remark. I regret 
to be forced to confess that I greatly fear even 
this virtuous little city has not escaped quite free, 
in the general deterioration of morals and man- 
ners. The New York hackmen, for instance, are 
very obliging and attentive ; but if it would not 
seem ungratefiil, I would hazard the statement 
that their attentions are unremitting to the deo^ree 
of being almost embarrassing, and proffered to the 
verge of obtrusiveness. I think, in short, that 
they are hardly quite delicate in their politeness. 
They press their hospitality on you till you sigh 
for a little marked neglect. They are not content 
with simple statement. They offer you their 
hack, for instance. You decline with thanks. 
They say that they will carry you to any part of 



56 GALA-DAYS. 

the city. Where is the pertinence of that, if you 
do not wish to go ? But they not only say it, 
they repeat it, they dwell upon it as if it were a 
cardinal virtue. Now you have never expressed 
or entertained the remotest suspicion that they 
would not carry you to any part of the city. You 
have not the slightest intention or desire to dis- 
credit their assertion. The only trouble is, as 
I said before, you do not wish to go to any 
part of the city. Very few people have time 
to drive about in that general way ; and surely, 
when you have once distinctly informed them that 
you do not design to inspect New York, they 
ought to see plainly that you cannot change your 
whole plan of operations out of gratitude to them, 
and that the part of true politeness is to withdraw. 
But they even go beyond a censurable urgency ; 
for an old gentleman and lady, evidently unac- 
customed to travelling, had given themselves in 
charge of a driver, who placed them in his coach, 
leaving the door open while he went back seeking 
whom he might devour. Presently a rival coach- 
man came up and said to the aged and respectable 
couple, — 

" Here 's a carriage all ready to start." 
" But," replied the lady, " we have already told 
the gentleman who drives this coach that we 
would go with him." 

" Catch me to go in that coach, if I was you ! " 
responded the Avicked coachman. " Why, that 
coach has had the small-pox in it." 



GALA-DAYS. 57 

The lady started up in horror. At that moment 
the first driver appeared again, and Satan entered 
into me, and I felt in my heart that I should Hke 
to see a fight ; and then conscience stepped up 
and drove him away, but consoled me by the 
assurance that I should see the fight all the same, 
for such duplicity deserved the severest punish- 
ment, and it was my duty to make an expose and 
vindicate helpless innocence imposed upon in the 
persons of that worthy pair. Accordingly I said 
to the driver, as he passed me, — 

" Driver, that man in the gray coat is trying to 
frighten . the old lady and gentleman away from 
your coach, by telling them it has had the small- 
pox." 

Oh ! but did not the fire flash into his honest 
eyes, and leap into his swarthy cheek, and nerve 
his brawny arm, and clinch his horny fist, as he 
marched straightway up to the doomed offender, 
fiercely denounced his dishonesty, and violently 
demanded redress ? Ah ! then and there was 
hurrying to and fro, and eagerness and delight on 
every countenance, and a ring formed, and the 
prospect of a lovely " row," — and I did it; but 
a police-officer sprang up, full-armed, from some- 
where underground, and undid it all, and e;nforced 
a reluctant peace. 

And so we are at Saratoga. Now, of all places 
to stay at in the summer-time, Saratoga is the 
very last one to choose. It may have attractions 

3* 



58 GALA-DAYS. 

in winter ; but, if one wishes to rest and change 
and root down and shoot up and branch out, he 
might as well take lodgings in the water-wheel of 
a saw-mill. The uniformity and variety will be 
much the same. It is all a noiseless kind of din, 
narrow and intense. There is nothing in Sara- 
toga nor of Saratoga to see or to hear or to feel. 
They tell you of a lake. You jam into an omni- 
bus and ride four miles. Then you step into a 
cockle-shell and circumnavigate a pond, so small 
that it almost makes you dizzy to sail around it. 
This is the lake, — a very nice thing as far as it 
goes ; but when it has to be constantly on duty 
as the natural scenery of the whole surrounding 
country, it is putting altogether too fine a point on 
it. The picturesque people will inform you of an 
Indian encampment. You go to see it, thinking 
of the forest primeval, and expecting to be trans- 
ported back to tomahawks, scalps, and forefathers ; 
but you return without them, and that is all. I 
never heard of anybody's going anywhere. In 
fact there did not seem to be anywhere to go. 
Any suggestion of mine to strike out into the 
champaign was frowned down in the severest 
manner. As far as I could see, nobody ever did 
anything. There never was any plan on foot. 
Nothing was ever stirring. People sat on th^ 
piazza and sewed. They went to the springs, and 
the springs are dreadful. They bubble up salts 
and senna. I never knew anything that pretended 



GALA-DAYS. 59 

to be water that 'was half as bad. It has no one 
redeeming quaUty. It is bitter. It is greasy. 
Every spring is worse than the last, whichever 
end you begin at. They told apocryphal stories 
of people's drinking sixteen glasses before break- 
fast ; and yet it may have been true ; for, if one 
could bring himself to the point of drinking one 
glass of it, I should suppose it would have taken 
such a force to enable him to do it that he might 
go on drinking indefinitely, from the mere action 
of the original impulse. I should think one dose of 
it would render a person permanently indifferent 
to savors, and make him, like Mithridates, poison- 
proof. Nevertheless, people go to the springs 
and drink. Then they go to the bowling-alleys 
and bowl. In the evening, if you are hilariously 
inclined, you can make the tour of the hotels. In 
each one you see a large and brilliantly lighted 
parlor, along the four sides of which are women 
sitting, solemn and stately, in rows three deep, 
with a man dropped in here and there, about as 
thick as periods on a page, very young or very old 
or in white cravats. A piano or a band or some- 
thing that can make a noise makes it at intervals 
at one end of the room. They all look as if they 
were waiting for something, but nothing in par- 
ticular happens. Sometimes, after the mountain 
has labored awhile, some little mouse of a boy and 
girl will get up, execute an antic or two and sit 
down again, when everything relapses into its 



60 GALA-DAYS. 

original solemnity. At very long intervals some- 
body vvalks across the floor. There is a moderate 
fluttering of fans and an occasional whisper. Ex- 
pectation interspersed with gimcracks seems to be 
the programme. The greater part of the dancing 
that I saw was done by boys and girls. It was 
pretty and painful. Nobody dances so well as 
children ; no grace is equal to their grace ; but to 
go into a hotel at ten o'clock at night, and see 
little things, eight, ten, twelve years old, who 
ought to be in bed and asleep, tricked out in 
flounces and ribbons and all the paraphernaHa 
of ballet-girls, and dancing in the centre of a 
hollow square of strangers, — I call it murder 
in the first degree. What can mothers be think- 
ing of to abuse their children so ? Children are 
naturally healthy and simple; why should they 
be spoiled ? They will have to plunge into the 
world fiill soon enough ; why should the world 
be plunged into them ? Physically, mentally, 
and morally, the innocents are massacred. Night 
after night I saw* the same hildren led out to 
the slaughter, and as I looked I saw their round, 
red cheeks grow thin and white, their delicate 
nerves lose tone and tension, their brains be- 
come feeble and flabby, their minds flutter out 
weakly in mushn and ribbons, their vanity kindled 
by injudicious admiration, the sweet child-uncon- 
sciousness withering away in the glare of indis- 
criminate gazing, the innocence and simplicity and 



GALA-DAYS. ^ 61 

naturalness and childlikeness swallowed up in a 
seething whirlpool of artificialness, all the fine, 
golden butterfly-dust of modesty and delicacy and 
retiring girlhood ruthlessly rubbed off foreA^er be- 
fore girlhood had even reddened from the dim 
dawn of infancy. Oh ! it is cruel to sacrifice 
children so. j What can atone for a lost child- 
hood ? What can be given in recompense for 
the ethereal, spontaneous, sharply defined, new, 
delicious sensations of a sheltered, untainted, open- 
ing life ? 

Thoroughly worked into a white heat of indig- 
nation, w^e leave the babes in the wood to be 
despatched by their ruffian relatives, and go to 
another hotel. A larger parlor, larger rows, but 
still three deep and solemn. A tall man, with a 
face in which melancholy seems to be giving way 
to despair, a man most proper for an undertaker, 
but palpably out of place in a drawing-room, 
walks up and down incessantly, but noiselessly, in 
a persistent endeavor to bring out a dance. Now 
he fastens upon a newly arrived man. Now he 
plants himself before a bench of misses. You 
can hear the low rumble of his exhortation and the 
tittering replies. After a persevering course of 
entreaty and persuasion, a set is drafted, the music 
galvanizes, and the dance begins. 

I like to see people do w^th their might whatso- 
ever their hands or their tongues or their feet find 
to do. A half-and-half performance of the right is 



62 , GALA-DAYS. 

just about as mischievous as the perpetration of 
the wrong. It is vacillation, hesitation, lack of 
will, feebleness of purpose, imperfect execution, 
that works ill in all life. Be monarch of all you 
survey. If a woman decides to do her own house- 
work, let her go in royally among her pots and 
kettles, and set everything a-stewing and baking 
and broiling and boiling, as a queen might. . If she 
decides not to do housework, but to superintend 
its doing, let her say to her servant, " Go," and he 
goeth, to another, " Come," and he cometh, to a 
third, " Do this," and he doeth it, and not potter 
about. So, when girls get themselves up and go 
to Saratoga for a regular campaign, let their 
bearing be soldierly. Let them be gay with aban- 
donment. Let them take hold of it as if they 
liked it. I do not affect the word flirtation, but 
the thing itself is not half so criminal as one would 
think from the animadversions visited upon it. 
Of course, a deliberate setting yourself to work to 
make some one fall in love with you, for the mere 
purpose of showing your power, is abominable, — - 
or would be, if anybody ever did it; but I do 
not suppose it ever was done, except in fifth-rate 
novels. What I mean is, that it is entertaining, 
harmless, and beneficial for young people to amuse 
themselves with each other to the top of their 
bent, if their bent is a natural and right one. A 
few hearts may suffer accidental, transient injury ; 
but hearts are hke limbs, all the stronger for 



GALA-DAYS. 63 

being broken. Besides, where one man or wo- 
man is injured by loving too much, nine hun- 
dred and ninety-nine die the death from not 
loving enough. ^ | 

But these Saratoga girls did neither one thing 
nor another. They dressed themselves in their 
best, making a point of it, and failed. They as- 
sembled themselves together of set purpose to be 
lively, and they were infectiously dismal. They 
did not dress well : one looked rustic ; another 
was dowdyish ; a third was over-fine ; a fourth 
was insignificant. Their bearing was not good, in 
the main. They danced, and whispered, and 
laughed, and looked like milkmaids. They had 
no style, no figure. Their shoulders were high, 
and their chests were flat, and they were one-sided, 
and they stooped, — all of which would have been 
of no account, if they had only been unconsciously 
enjoying themselves: but they consciously were 
not. It is possible that they thought they were 
happy, but I knew better. You are never happy, 
unless you are master of the situation ; and they 
were not. They endeavored to appear at ease, — 
a thing which people who are at ease never do. 
They looked as if they had all their lives been 
meaning to go to Saratoga, and now they had got 
there and were determined not to betray any un- 
wontedness. It was not the timid, eager, delight- 
ed, fascinating, graceful awkwardness of a new 
young girl ; it was not the careless, hearty, whole- 



64 GALA-DAYS. 

souled enjoyment of an experienced girl ; it was 
not the natural, indifferent, imperial queening it 
of an acknowledged monarch : but something that 
caught hold of the hem of the garment of them all. 
It was they with the sheen damped off. So it was 
not imposing. I could pick you up a dozen girls 
straight along, right out of the pantries and the 
butteries, right up from the washing- tubs and the 
sewing-machines, who should be abundantly able 
to " hoe their row " with them anywhere. In 
short, I was extremely disappointed. I expected 
to see the high fashion, the very birth and breed- 
ing, the cream cheese of the country, and it was 
skim-milk. / If that is birth, one can do q^ite as 
well without being born at all. / Occasionally you 
would see a girl with gentle blood in her veins, 
whether it were butcher-blood or banker-blood, but 
she only made the prevailing plebsiness more strik- 
ing. Now I maintain that a woman ought to be 
very handsome or very clever, or else she ought to 
go to work and do something. ^JBeauty is of itself 
a divine gift and adequate. " Beauty is its own 
excuse for being " anywhere. It ought not to be 
fenced in or monopolized, any more than a statue 
or a mountain. It ought to be free and common, 
a benediction to all weary wayfarers. It can never 
be profaned ; for it veils itself from the unapprecia- 
tive eye, and shines only upon its worshippers. 
So a clever woman, whether she be a painter or a 
teacher or a dress-maker, — if she really has an 



II 



GALA-DAYS. 65 

object in life, a career, she is safe. She is a power. 
She commands a realm. She owns a world. She 
is bringing things to bear. Let her alone. But 
it is a very dangerous and a very melancholy thing 
for common women to be " lying on their oars " 
long at a time. Some of these were, I suppose, 
what Winthrop calls "business-women, fighting 
their way out of vulgarity into style." The pro- 
cess is rather uninteresting, but the result may be 
glorious. Yet a good many of them were good 
honest, kind, common girls, only demoralized by 
long lying around in a waiting posture. It had 
taken the fire and sparkle out of them. They 
were not in a healthy state. They were de- 
graded, contracted, flaccid. They did not hold 
themselves high. They knew that in a market- 
able point of view there was a frightful glut of 
women. The usually small ratio of men was un- 
usually diminished by the absence of those who 
had gone to the war, and of those who, as was 
currently reported, were ashamed that they had 
not gone. A few available men had it all their 
own way ; the women were on the lookout for 
them, instead of being themselves looked out for. 
They talked about " gentlemen," and being " com- 
panionable to g'^w-tlemen," and who was " fasci- 
nating to g-ew-tlemen," till the '' grand old name " 
became a nuisance. There was an under-current 
of unsated coquetry. I don't suppose they were 
any sillier than the rest of us ; but when our silli- 



66 GALA-DAYS. 

ness is mixed in with housekeeping and sewing 
and teaching and returning visits, it passes off 
harmless. When it is stripped of all these modi- 
fiers, however, and goes off exposed to Saratoga, 
and melts in with a hundred other sillinesses, it 
makes a great show. 

No, I don't like Saratoga. I don't think it is 
wholesome. No place can be healthy that keeps 
up such an unmitigated dressing. 

" Where do you walk ? " I asked an artless little 
lady. 

" O, almost always on the long piazza. It is so 
clean there, and we don't like to soil our dresses." 

Now I ask if girls could ever get into that state 
in the natural course of things ! It is the result 
of bad habits. They cease to care for things 
which they ought to like to do, and they devote 
themselves to what ought to be only an incident. 
People dress in their best without break. They 
go to the springs before breakfast in shining rai- 
ment, and they go into the parlor after supper 
in shining raiment, and it is shine, shine, shine, 
all the way between, and a different shine each 
time. You may well suppose that I was like 
an owl among birds of Paradise, for what little 
finery I had was in my (eminently) travelling- 
trunk : yet, though it was but a dory, compared 
with the Noah's arks that drove up every day, 
I felt that, if I could only once get inside of it, 
* I could make things fly to some purpose. Like 



GALA-DAYS. 67 

poor Rabette, I would show the city that the 
country too could wear clothes ! I never walked 
down Broadway without seeing a dozen white 
tninks, and every white trunk that I saw I was 
fully convinced was mine, if I could only get at 
it. By and by mine came, and I blossomed. I 
arrayed myself for morning, noon, and night, and 
everything else that came up, and was, as the 
poet says, — ' 

*' Prodigious in change, 
And endless in range," — 

for I would have scorned not to be as good as the 
best. The result was, that in three days I touched 
bottom. But then we went away, and my reputa- 
tion was saved. I don't believe anybody ever did 
a larger business on a smaller capital ; but I put a 
bold face on it. I cherish the hope that nobody 
suspected I could not go on in that ruinous way 
all summer, — I, who in three days had mustered 
into service every dress and sash and ribbon and 
rag that I had had in three years or expected 
to have in three more. /But I never will, if I can 
help it, hold my head down where other people 
are holding their heads up. | 

I would not be understood as decrying or de- 
preciating dress. It is a duty as well as a delight. 
Mrs. Madison is reported to have said that she 
would never forgive a young lady who did not 
dress to please, or one who seemed pleased with 
her dress. And not only young ladies, but old 



V( I 



68 GALA-DAYS. 

ladies and old gentlemen, and everybody, ought to 
make their dress a concord and not a discord. 
But Saratoga is pitched on a perpetual falsetto, 
and stuns you. One becomes sated with an inter- 
minable piece de resistance of full dress. At the 
seaside you bathe ; at the mountains you put on 
stout boots and coarse frocks and go a-fishing ; but 
Saratoga never " lets up," — if I may be par- 
doned the phrase, j Consequently, you see much of 
crinoline and little of character, j You have to get 
at the human nature just as Thoreau used to get 
at bird-nature and fish-nature and turtle-nature, 
by sitting perfectly still in one place and waiting 
patiently till it comes out. You see more of the 
reality of people in a single day's tramp than in 
twenty days of guarded monotone. Now I can- 
not conceive of any reason why people should go 
to Saratoga, except to see people. True, as a 
general thing, they are the last objects you desire 
to see, when you are summering. But if one has 
been cooped up in the house or blocked up in the 
country during the nine months of our Northern 
winter, he may have a mighty hunger and thirst, 
when he is thawed out, to see human faces and 
hear human voices ; but even then Saratoga is not 
the place to go to, on account of this very arti- 
ficialness. By artificial I do not mean deceitful. 
I saw nobody but nice people tliere, smooth, kind, 
and polite. By artificial I mean wrought up. 
You don't get at the heart of things. Artificial- 



GALA-DAYS. 69 

ness spreads and spans all with a crystal barrier, 
— invisible, but palpable. Nothing was left to 
grow and go at its own sweet will. The very 
springs were paved and pavilioned. For green 
fields and welling fountains and a possibility of 
brooks, which one expects from the name, you 
found a Greek temple, and a pleasure-ground, 
graded and grassed and pathed like a cemetery, 
wherein nymphs trod daintily in elaborate morn- 
ing-costume. Everything took pattern and was 
elaborate. Nothing was left to the imagination, 
the taste, the curiosity. A bland, smooth, smiling 
surface baffled and blinded you, and threatened 
profanity. Now profanity is wicked and vulgar ; 
but if you listen to the feeds next summer, I am 
not sure that you will not hear them whispering, 
" Thunder ! " 

For the restorative qualities of Saratoga I have 
nothing to say. I was well when I went there ; 
nor did my experience ever furnish me with any 
disease that I should consider worse than an inter- 
mittent attack of her spring waters. But what- 
ever it may do for the body, I do not believe it is 
good for the soul. I do not believe that such 
places, such scenes, such a fashion of life ever 
nourishes a vigorous womanhood or manhood. /; 
Taken homoeopathically, it may be harmless ; but 
if it become a habit, a necessity, it must vitiate, 
enervate, destroy. Men can stand it, for the sea- 
breezes and the mountain-breezes may have full 



70 GALA-DAYS. 

sweep through their life ; but women cannot, for 
they just go home and live air-tight. 

If the railroad-men at Saratoga tell you that 
you can go straight from there to the foot of Lake 
George, don't you believe a word of it. Perhaps 
you can, and perhaps you cannot ; but you are not 
any more likely to " can " for their saying so. We 
left Saratoga for Fort-William-Henry Hotel in 
full faith of an afternoon ride and a sunset arri- 
val, based on repeated and unhesitating assurances 
to that effect. Instead of which, we went a few 
miles, and were then dumped into a blackberry- 
patch, where we were informed that we must wait 
seven hours. So much ' for the afternoon ride 
through summer fields and " Sunset on Lake 
George," from the top of a coach. But I made 
no unmanly laments, for we were out of Saratoga, 
and that was happiness. We were among cows 
and barns and homely rail-fences, and that was 
comfort ; so we strolled contentedly through the 
pasture, found a river, — I believe it was the 
Hudson ; at any rate, Halicarnassus said so, 
though I don't imagine he knew ; but he would 
take oath it was Acheron rather than own up to 
ignorance on any point whatever, — watched the 
canal-boats and boatmen go down, marvelled at 
the arbor-vitse trees g-rowino; wild along the riv- 
er-banks, green, hale, stately, and symmetrical, 
against the dismal mental background of two little 



GALA-DAYS. 71 

consumptive shoots bolstered up in our front yard 
at home, and dying daily, notwithstanding per- 
sistent and affectionate nursing with " flannels and 
rum," and then we went back to the blackberry- 
station and inquired whether there was nothing 
celebrated in the vicinity to which visitors of re- 
ceived Orthodox creed should dutifully pay their 
respects, and were gratified to learn that we were 
but a few miles from Jane McCrea and her Indian 
murderers. Was a carriage procurable ? Well, 
yes, if the ladies would be wilhng to go in that. 
It was n't very smart, but it would take 'em safe, 
— as if " the ladies " would have raised any ob- 
jections to going in a wheelbarrow, had it been 
necessary, and so we bundled in. The hills were 
steep, and our horse, the property of an adven- 
titious by-stander, was of the Rosinante breed ; 
but we were in no hurry, seeing that the only 
thing awaiting us this side the sunset was a black- 
berry-patch without any blackberries, and we 
walked up hill and scraped down, till we got into 
a lane which somebody told us led to the Fort, 
from which the village. Fort Edward, takes its 
name. But, instead of a fort, the lane ran full 
tilt against a pair of bars. 

" Now we are lost," I said, sententiously. 

" A gem of countless price," pursued Halicar- 
nassus, who never quotes poetry except to de- 
stroy my equilibrium. 

" How long will it be profitable to remain 



72 GALA-DAYS. 

here ? " asked Grande, when we had sat immova- 
ble and speechless for the space of five minutes. 

" There seems to be nowhere else to go. We 
have got to the end," said Halicarnassus, roaming 
as to his eyes over into the wheat-field beyond. 

" We might turn," suggested the Anakim, look- 
ing bright. 

" How can you turn a horse in this knitting- 
needle of a lane ? " I demanded. 

" I don't know," replied Halicarnassus, dubi- 
ously, " unless I take him up in my arms, and set 
him down with his head the other way," — and 
immediately turned him deftly in a corner about 
half as laroje as the wagon. 

The next lane we came to was the right one, 
and being narrow, rocky, and rough, we left our 
carriage and walked. 

A whole volume of the peaceful and prosperous 
history of our beloved country could be read in 
the fact that the once belligerent, life-saving, 
death-dealing fort was represented by a hen-coop ; 
yet I was disappointed. I was hungry for a ruin, 
— some visible hint of the past. Such is human 
nature, — ever prone to be more impressed by a 
disappointment of its own momentary gratification 
than by the most obvious well-being of a nation ; 
but, glad or sorry, of Fort Edward was not left 
one stone upon another. Several single stones lay 
about, promiscuous rather than belligerent. Flag- 
staff and palisades lived only in a few straggling 



GALA-DAYS. 73 

bean-poles. For the heavy boommg of cannon 
rose the " quauk ! " of ducks and the cackHng of 
hens. We went to the spot which tradition points 
out as the phice where Jane McCrea met her 
death. River flowed, and raftsmen sang below ; 
women stood at their washing-tubs, and white- 
headed children stared at us from above ; nor from 
the unheeding river or the forgetful woods came 
shriek or cry or faintest wail of pain. 

When we were little, and geography and his- 
tory were but printed words on white paper, not 
places and events, Jane McCrea was to us no 
suffering woman, but a picture of a low-necked, 
long-skirted, scanty dress, long hair grasped by a 
half-naked Indian, * and two unnatural-looking 
hands raised in entreaty. It was interesting as a 
picture, but it excited no pity, no horror, because 
it was only a picture. We never saw women 
dressed in that style. We knew that women did 
not take journeys through woods without bonnet 
or shawl, and we spread a veil of ignorant, indif- 
ferent incredulity over the wdiole. But as we 
grow up, printed words take on new life. The 
latent fire in them lights up and glows. The 
mystic words throb with vital heat, and burn down 
into our souls to an answering fire. As we stand, 
on this soft summer day, by the old tree which 
tradition declares to have witnessed that fateful 
scene, we go back into a summer long ago, but 
fair, and just like this. Jane McCrea is no longer 

4 



74 GALA-DAYS. 

a myth, but a young girl, blooming and beautiful 
with the roses of her seventeen years. Farther 
back still, we see an old man's darling, little Jenny 
of the Manse, a light-hearted child, with sturdy 
Scotch blood leaping in her young veins, — then a 
tender orphan, sheltered by a brother's care, — 
then a gentle maiden, light-hearted no longer, 
heavy-freighted, rather, but with a priceless bur- 
den, — a happy girl, to whom love calls with 
stronger voice than brother's blood, stronger even 
than life. Yonder in the woods lurk wily and 
wary foes. Death with unspeakable horrors lies 
in ambush there ; but yonder also stands the sol- 
dier lover, and possible greeting, after long, weary 
absence, is there. What fear can master that 
overpowering hope ? Estrangement of families, 
political disagreement, a separated loyalty, all melt 
away, are fused together in the warmth of girl- 
ish love. Taxes, representation, what things are 
these to come between two hearts ? No Tory, no 
traitor is her lover, but her own brave hero and 
true knio;ht. Woe ! woe ! the eao;er dream is 
broken by mad war-whoops ! alas ! to those fierce 
wild men, what is love, or loveliness ? Pride, 
and passion, and the old accursed hunger for gold 
flame up in their savage breasts. Wrathful, loath- 
some fingers clutch the long, fair hair that even 
the fingers of love have caressed but with reverent 
half-touch, — and love and hope and. life go out 
in one dread moment of horror and despair. Now, 



GALA-DAYS. 75 

tlirough the reverberations of more than fourscore 
years, through all the tempest-rage of a war more 
awful than that, and fraught, we hope, with a 
grander joy, a clear, young voice, made sharp with 
agony, rings through the shuddering woods, cleaves 
up through the summer sky, and wakens in every 
heart a thrill of speechless pain. Along these 
peaceful banks I see a bowed form walking, youth 
in his years, but deeper furrows in his face than 
age can plough, stricken down from the heights of 
his ambition and desire, all the vigor and fire of 
manhood crushed and quenched beneath the hor- 
ror of one fearful memory. 

Sweet summer sky, bending above us soft and 
saintly, beyond your blue depths is there not 
Heaven ? 

" We may as well give Dobbin his oats here," 
said Halicarnassus. 

We had broucrht a few in a bao; for luncheon, 
thinking it might help him over the hills. So tlie 
wagon was rummaged, the bag brought to light, 
and I was sent to one of the nearest houses to get 
something for him to eat out of. I did not think 
to ask wdiat particular vessel to inquire for ; but 
after I had knocked, I decided upon a meat-platter 
or a pudding-dish, and with the good woman's 
permission finally took both, that Halicarnassus 
might have his choice. 

" Which is the best ? " I asked, holding them 
up. 



76 GALA-DAYS. 

He surveyed them carefully, and then said, — 

" Now run right back and get a tumbler for 
him to drink out of, and a teaspoon to feed him 
witlK" 

I started in good faith, from a mere habit of 
unquestioning obedience, but with the fourth step 
my reason returned to me, and I returned to Hali- 
Earnassus and — kicked him. That sounds very 
dreadful and horrible, and it is, if you are thinking 
of a great, brutal, brogan kick, such as a stupid 
farmer gives to his patient oxen ; but not, if you 
mean only a delicate, compact, penetrative nudge 
with the toe of a tight-fitting gaiter, — addressed 
rather to the conscience than the sole, to the 
sensibilities rather than the senses. The kick 
masculine is coarse, boorish, unmitigated, predi- 
cable only of Calibans. The kick feminine is 
expressive, suggestive, terse, electric, — an indis- 
pensable instrument in domestic discipline, as wo- 
men will bear me witness, and not at all incom- 
patible with beauty, grace, and amiability. But, 
right or wrong, after all this interval of rest and 
reflection, in full view of all the circumstances, 
/ my only regret is that I did not kick him harder. 

" Now go and fetch your own tools ! " I cried, 
shaking off the yoke of servitude. " I w^on't be 
your stable-boy any longer ! " 

Then, perforce, he gathered up the crockery, 
marched off in disgrace, and came back with a 
molasses-hogshead, or a wash-tub, or some such 



GALA-DAYS. 77 

overgrown mastodon, to turn his sixpenny-worth 
of oats into. 

Ha^ang fed our mettlesome steed, the next thing 
w^as to water him. The Anakim rememhered to 
have seen a pump wdth a trough somewhere, 
and they proposed to reconnoitre wliile we should 
" wait 5?/ the wagon " their return. No, I said 
we would drive on to the pump, while they 
walked. 

" You drive ! " ejaculated Halicarnassus, con- 
temptuously. 

Now I do not, as a general thing, have an over- 
weening respect for female teamsters. There is 
but one woman in the world to whose hands I 
confide the reins and my bones with entire equa- 
nimity ; and she says, that, when she is driving, 
she dreads of all things to meet a driving woman. 
If a man said this, it might be set down to preju- 
dice. I don't make any account of Halicarnassus's 
assertion, that, if two women walking in the road 
on a muddy day meet a carriage, they never keep 
together, but invariably one runs to the right and 
one to the left, so that the driver cannot favor 
them at all, but has to crowd between them, and 
drive both into the mud. That is palpably inter- 
ested false witness. He thinks it is fine fun to 
push women into the mud, and frames such flimsy 
excuses. But as a woman's thoughts about wo- 
men, this woman's utterances are deserving of 
attention ; and she savs that women are not to be 



78 GALA-DAYS. 

depended upon. She is never sure that they will 
not turn out on the wrong side. They are ner- 
vous ; they are timid ; they are unreasoning ; they 
are reckless. They will give a horse a discon- 
nected, an utterly inconsequent " cut," making 
him spring, to the jeopardy of their own and 
others' safety. They are not concentrative, and 
they are not infallibly courteous, as men are. I 
remember I was driving with her once between 
Newburyport and Boston. It was getting late, 
and we were very desirous to reach our destination 
before nightfall. Ahead of us a woman and a girl 
were jogging along in a country wagon. As we 
wished to go much faster than they, we turned 
aside to pass them ; but just as we were well 
abreast, the woman started up her horse, and 
he skimmed over the ground like a bird. We 
laughed, and followed, well content. But after he 
had gone perhaps an eighth of a mile, his speed 
slackened down to the former jog-trot. Three 
times we attempted to pass before we really com- 
prehended the fact that that infamous woman was 
deliberately detaining and annoying us. The 
third time, when we had so nearly passed them 
that our horse was turning into the road again, 
she struck hers up so suddenly and unexpectedly 
that her wheels almost grazed ours. Of course, 
understanding her game, we ceased the attempt, 
having no taste for horse-racing ; and nearly all 
the way from Newburyport to Rowley, she kept 



GALA-DAYS. 79 

up tliat brigandry, jogging on, and forcing us to 
jog on, neither going ahead herself nor suffering 
us to do so, — a perfect and most provoking dog 
in a manger. Her girl-associate would look be- 
hind every now and then to take observations, 
and I mentally hoped that the frisky Bucephalus 
would frisk his mistress out of the cart and break 
her ne — arm, or at least put her shoulder out of 
joint. If he did, I had fully determined in my 
own mind to hasten to her assistance, and shame 
her to death with delicate and assiduous kindness. 
But fate lingered like all the rest of us. She 
reached Rowley in safety, and there our roads 
separated. Whether she stopped there, or drove 
into Ethiopian wastes beyond, I cannot say ; but 
I have no doubt that the milk which she carried 
into Newburyport to market was blue, the but- 
ter frowy, and the potatoes exceedingly smalL 

Now do you mean to tell me that any man 
would have been guilty of such a thing ? I don't 
mean, would have committed such discourtesy to a 
woman ? Of course not ; but would a man ever 
do it to a man ? Never. He might try it once 
or twice, just for fun, just to show oif his horse, 
but he never would have persisted in it till a joke 
became an insult, not to say a possible injury. 

Still, as I was about to say, when that Rowley 
jade interrupted me, though I have small faith in 
Di-Vernonism generally, and no large faith in my 
own personal prowess, I did feel myself equal to 



80 GALA-DAYS. 

the task of holding the reins while our Rosinante 
walked along an open road to a pump. I there- 
fore resented Hahcarnassus's contemptuous tones, 
mounted the wagon with as much dignity as wag- 
ons allow, sat straight as an arrow on the driver's 
seat, took the reins in both hands, — as they used 
to tell me I must not, when I was a little girl, 
because that was women's way, but I find now 
that men have adopted it, so I suppose it is all 
right, — and proceeded to show, like Sam Patch, 
that some things can be done as well as others. 
Halicarnassus and the Anakim took up their posi- 
tion in line on the other side of the road, hat in 
hand, watching. 

" Go fast, and shame them," whispered Grande, 
from the back-seat, and the suggestion jumped 
with my own mood. It was a moment of intense 
excitement. To be or not to be. I jerked the 
lines. Peojasus did not start. 

" C-1-k-l-k ! " No forward movement. 

" Huddup ! " Still waiting for reinforcements. 

"H-w-e." (Attempt at a whistle. Dead fail- 
ure.) 

( Sotto voce.') " O you beast ! " (^Pianissimo.') 
" Gee ! Haw ! haw ! haw ! " with a terrible jerk- 
ing of the reins. 

A voice over the way, distinctly audible, utters 
the cabalistic words, " Two forty." Another 
voice, as audible, asks, " Which '11 you bet on ? " 
It was not soothing. It did seem as if the imp of 



GALA-DAYS. 81 

the perverse had taken possession of that terrible 
nag to go and make such a display at such a 
moment. But as his will rose, so did mine, and 
as my will went up, my whip went with it ; but 
before it came down, Halicarnassus made shift to 
drone out, '' Would n't Flora go faster, if she was 
untied ? " 

To be sure, I had forgotten to unfasten him, 
and there those two men had stood and known it 
all the time ! I was in the wagon, so they were 
secure from personal violence, but I have a vague 
impression of some " pet names " flying wildly 
about in the air in that vicinity. Then we trun- 
dled safely down the lane. We were to go in the 
direction leading away from home, — the horse's. 
I don't think he perceived it at first, but as soon 
as he did snuff the fact, which happened when he 
had gone perhaps three rods, he quietly turned 
around and headed the other way, paying no more 
attention to my reins or my terrific " whoas ! " 
than if I were a sleeping babe. A horse is none 
of your woman's-rights men. He is Pauline. He 
suffers not the woman to usurp authority over 
him. He never says anything nor votes anything, 
but declares himself unequivocally by taking things 
into his own hands, whenever he knows there is 
nobody but a woman behind him, — and somehow 
he always does know.) After Halicarnassus had 
turned him back and set him going the right way, 
I took on a gruff, manny voice, to deceive. Non- 

4* F 



82 GALA-DAYS. 

sense ! I could almost see him snap his fingers at 
me. He minded my wliip no more than he did a 
fly, — not so much as he did some flies. Grande 
said she supposed his back was all callous. I acted 
upon the suggestion, knelt down in the bottom of 
the wagon, and leaned over the dasher to whip 
him on his belly, then climbed out on the shafts 
and snapped about his ears ; but he stood it much 
better than I. Finally I found that by taking the 
small end of the wooden whip-handle, and sticking 
it into him, I could elicit a faint flash of light ; so 
I did it with assiduity, but the moderate trot which 
even that produced was not enough to accomplish 
my design, which was to outstrip the two men and 
make them run or beg. The opposing forces ar- 
rived at the pump about the same time. 

Halicarnassus took the handle, and gave about 
five jerks. Then the Anakim took it and gave 
five more. Then they both stopped and wiped 
their faces. 

*' What do you suppose this pump was put here 
for?" asked Halicarnassus. 

" A milestone, probably," replied the Anakim. 

Then they resumed their Herculean efforts till 
the water came, and then they got into the wagon, 
and we drove into the blackberries once more, 
where we arrived just in season to escape a thun- 
der-shower, and pile merrily into one of several 
coaches waiting to convey passengers in various 
directions as soon as the train should come. 



GALA-DAYS. 83 

It Is very selfish, but fine fun, to have secured 
your own chosen seat and bestowed your own lug- 
gage, and have nothing to do but witness the 
anxieties and efforts of other people. The exquis- 
ite pleasure we enjoyed for fifteen minutes, edified 
at the last by hearing one of our coachmen call 
out, " Here, Rosey, this way ! " — whereupon a 
manly voice, in the darkness, near us, soliloquized, 
" Respectful way of addressing a judge of the 
Supreme Court ! " and, being interrogated, the 
voice informed us that " Rosey " was the vulgate 
for Judge Rosecranz ; whereupon Halicarnassus 
glossed over the rampant democracy by remark- 
ing that the diminutive was probably a term of 
endearment rather than familiarity ; whereupon 
the manly voice — if I might say it — snickered 
audibly in the darkness, and we all relapsed into 
silence. But could anything be more characteris- 
tic of a certain phase of the manners of our great 
and glorious country ? Where are the Trollopes ? 
Where is Dickens ? Where is Basil Hall ? 

It is but a dreary ride to Lake George on a dark 
and rainy evening, unless people like riding for its 
own sake, as I do. If there are suns and stars 
and skies, very well. If there are not, very well 
too : I like to ride all the same. I like everything 
in this world but Saratoo-a. Once or twice our 
monotony was broken up by short halts before 
country inns. At one an excitement was going 
on. " Had a casualty here this afternoon," re- 



84 GALA-DAYS. 

marked a fresh passenger, as soon as he was fairly- 
seated. A casualty is a windfall to a country 
village. It is really worth while to have a head 
broken occasionally, for the wholesome stirring-up 
it gives to the heads that are not broken. On the 
whole, I question whether collisions and collusions 
do not cause as much good as harm. Certainly, 
people seem to take the most lively satisfaction in 
receiving and imparting all the details concerning 
them. Our passenger-friend opened his budget 
with as much complacence as ever did Mr. Glad- 
stone or Disraeli, and with a confident air of know- 
ing that he was going not only to enjoy a piece of 
good-fortune himself, but to administer a great 
gratification to us. Our " casualty " turned out 
to be the affair of a Catholic priest, of which our 
informer spoke only in dark hints and with signifi- 
cant shoulder-shrugs and eyebrow-elevations, be- 
cause it was " not exactly the tiling to get out, 
you know" ; but if it was n't to get out, why did he 
let it out ? and so from my dark corner I watched 
him as a cat does a mouse, and the lamp-light 
shone full upon him, and I understood every word 
and shrug, and I am going to tell it all to the 
world. I translated that the holy father had been 
" skylarking " in a boat, and in gay society had 
forgotten his vows of frugality and abstinence and 
general mortification of the flesh, and had become, 
not very drunk, but drunk enough to be danger- 
ous, when he came ashore and took a horse in his 



GALA-DAYS. 85 

hands, and §o upset his carriage, and gashed his 
temporal artery, and came to grief, which is such a 
casualty as does not happen every day, and I don't 
blame people for making the most of it. Then 
the moral was pointed, the tale adorned, and 
the impression deepened, solemnized, and struck 
home by the fact that the very horse concerned 
in the " casualty " was to be fastened behind our 
coach, and the ^^hole population came out with 
lanterns and umbrellas to tie him on, — all but one 
man, who was deaf, and stood on the piazza, anx- 
ious and eager to know everything that had been 
and was still occurring, and yet sorry to give 
trouble, and so compromising the matter and mak- 
ing it worse, as compromisers generally do, by 
questioning everybody with a deprecating, fawn- 
ing air. 

Item. We shall all, if we live long enough, be 
deaf, but we need not be meek about it. I for 
one am determined to walk up to people and de- 
mand what they are saying at the point of the 
bayonet. Deafness, if it must be so, but inde- 
pendence at any rate. 

And when the fulness of time is come, we 
alight at Fort-William-Henry Hotel, and all night 
long through the sentient woods I hear the 
booming of Johnson's cannon, the rattle of Die- 
skau's guns, and that wild war-whoop, more terri- 
ble than all. Again old Monro watches from his 
fortress-walls the steadily approaching foe, and 



86 GALA-DAYS. 

looks in vain for help, save to his own brave 
heart. I see the light of conquest shining in his 
foeman's eye, darkened by no shadow of the fate 
that waits his coming on a bleak Northern hill ; 
but, generous in the hour of victory, he shall not 
be less noble in defeat, — for to generous hearts 
all generous hearts are friendly, whether they 
stand face to face or side by side. 

Over the woods and the waves,^when the morn- 
ing breaks, like a bridegroom coming forth from 
his chamber, rejoicing as a strong man to run a 
race, comes up the sun in his might and crowns 
himself king. All the summer day, from morn 
to dewy eve, we sail over the lakes of Paradise. 
Blue waters, and blue sky, soft clouds and green 
islands, and fair, fruitful shores, sharp-pointed 
hills, long, gentle slopes and swells, and the lights 
and shadows of far-stretching woods ; and over 
all the potence of the unseen past, the grand, his- 
toric past, — soft over all the invisible mantle 
which our fathers flung at their departing, — the 
mystic effluence of the spirits that trod these wilds 
and sailed these waters, — the courage and the 
fortitude, the hope that battled against hope, the 
comprehensive outlook, the sagacious purpose, the 
resolute will, the unhesitating self-sacrifice, the 
undaunted devotion which has made this heroic 
ground ; cast these into your own glowing cruci- 
ble, O gracious friend, and crystallize for yourself 
such a gem of days as shall worthily be set forever 
in your crown of the beatitudes. 



'^^^ 




III 




OMETIMES I become disgusted with 
myself. Not very often, it is true, for 
I don't understand the self-abhorrence 
that I occasionally see long drawn out 
in the strictly private printed diaries of good dead 
people. A man's self-knowledge, as regards his 
Maker, is a matter that lies only between his 
Maker and himself, of which no printed or writ- 
ten (scarcely even spoken) words can give, or 
ought to give, a true transcript; but in respect 
of our relations to other people I suppose we 
may take tolerably accurate views, and state them 
without wickedness, if it comes in the way ; and 
since the general trend of opinion seems to be 
towards excessive modesty, I will sacrifice my- 
^If to the good of society, and say that, in 
the main, I think I am a rather " nice " sort 
of person. Of course I do a great many things, 
and say a great many things, and think a great 
many things, that I ought not ; but when I think 
of the sins that I don't commit, — the many times 



88 GALA-DAYS. 

when I feel cross enough to " bite a ten-penny nail 
in two," and only bite my lips, — the sacrifices I 
make for other people, and don't mention it, and 
they themselves never know it, — the quiet cheer- 
fulness I maintain when the fire goes out, or un- 
expected guests arrive and there is no bread in the 
house, or my manuscript is respectfully declined 
by that infatuated editor, — when I reflect upon 
these things, and a thousand others like unto 
them, I must say, I am lost in admiration of my 
own virtues. You may not like me, but that is 
a mere difference of taste. At any rate, I like 
myself very well, and find myself very good com- 
pany. Many a laugh, and " lots " or " heaps " 
(according as you are a Northern or a Southern 
provincial) of conversation we have all alone, and 
are usually on exceeding good terms, which is 
a pleasure, even when other people like me, and 
an immense consolation when they don't. But 
as I was saying, I do sometimes fall out with 
myself, and with human nature in general (and, 
in fact, I rather think tlie secret of self-com- 
placence lurks somewhere hereabouts, — in a 
mental assumption that our virtues are our own, 
but our faults belong to the race). But to think 
that we were so puny and puerile that we could 
not stand the beauty that breathed around us ! 
I do not mean that it killed us, but it drained us. 
It did not cease to be beautiful, but we ceased to 
be overpoAvered. When the day began, eye and 



GALA-DAYS. 89 

soul were filled with the light that never was 
on sea or shore. We spoke low and little, gaz- 
ing with throbbing hearts, breathless, receptive, 
solemn, and before twelve o'clock we flatted out 
and made jests. This is humiliation, — that our 
dullard souls cannot keep up to the pitch of sub- 
limity for two hours ; that we could sail through 
Glory and Beauty, through Past and Present, and 
laugh. Low as I sank with the rest, though, I do 
believe I held out the lono-est : but what can one 
frail pebble do against a river ? " How pretty 
cows look in a landscape," I said ; for you know, 
even if you must come down, it is better to roll 
down an inclined plane than to drop over a preci- 
pice ; and I thought, since I saw that descent was 
inevitable, I would at least engineer the party 
gently through aesthetics to puns. So I said, 
" How pretty cows look in a landscape, so calm 
and reflective, and sheep harmoniously happy in 
the summer- tide." 

" Yes," said the Anakim, who is New Hamp- 
shire born ; " but you ought to see the New 
Hampshire sheep, if you want the real article." 

" I don't," I responded. " I only want the 
picture." 

" Ever notice the difference between Vermont 
and New Hampshire sheep ? " struck up Hali- 
carnassus, who must always put in his oar. 

" No," I said, " and I don't believe there 
is any." 



90 GALA-DAYS. 

" Pooh ! Tell New Hampshire sheep as far off 
as you can see 'em," he persisted, " by their short 
legs and long noses. Short legs to bring 'em near 
the grass, and long noses to poke under the rocks 
and get it." 

" Yes, my boy, yes," said the Anakim pleasant- 
ly. " I O U 1 " 

" He hath made everything beautiful m his 
time," murmured Grande, partly because, gazing 
at the distant prospect, she thought so, and partly 
as a praiseworthy attempt, in her turn, to pluck us 
out of the slough into which we had fallen. 

" I have heard," said Halicarnassus, who is 
always lugging in little scraps of information 
apropos to everything, — "I have been told that 
Dr. Alexander was so great an admirer of the 
Proverbs of Solomon, that he used to read them 
over every three months." 

" I beg your pardon," I interposed, glad of the 
opportunity to correct and humiliate him, " but 
that was not one of the Proverbs of Solomon." 

"Who said it was ? " asked the Grand Mogul, 
savagely. 

" Nobody ; but you thought it was when she 
said it," answered his antagonist, coolly. 

'' And whose proverb is it, my Lady Supe- 
rior ? " 

" It is in Ecclesiastes," I said. 

" Well, Ecclesiastes is next door to Solomon. 
It 's all one." Halicarnassus can creep through the 



GALA-DAYS. 91 

smallest knot-hole of any man of his size it has / 
ever been my lot to meet, provided there is any- ' 
thincT on the other side he wishes to set at. , If 
there is not, and especially if anything is there 
which he wishes to shun, a four hundred and 
fifty pounder cannot crash a hole large enough for 
you to push him through. By such a pitiful 
chink as that did his Infallible Highness wriggle 
himself out of the range of my guns, and pursue 
his line of remark. 

" But I really cannot say that I have been able 
to detect the excessive superiority of Solomon's 
proverbs. If it were not for the name of it, I 
think Sancho Panza's much better." 

" Taisez-vous. Hold your tongue," I said, 
without mitigation. If there is anything I cannot 
away with, it is trivial apostasy. I tolerate latitu- 
dinarianism when it is hereditary. Where peo- 
ple's fathers and mothers before them have been 
Pagans, and Catholics, and Mohammedans, you 
don't blame them for beins; so. You reo;ret their 
error, and strive to lead them back into the right 
path ; only they are not inflammatory. But to 
have people go out from the faith of their fathers 
with malice aforethought and their eyes open — 
w^ell, that is hot exactly what I mean either. 
That is a sorrowful, but not necessarily an exas- 
perating thing. What I mean is tliis : I see 
people Orthodox from their cradles, (and proba- 
bly only from their cradles, certainly not from 



92 GALA-DAYS. 

their brains,) who think it is something pretty to 
become Unitarianistic. They don't become Uni- 
tarians, as they never were Orthodox, because 
they have not thought enough or sense enough to 
become or to be anything ; but they hke to make 
a stir and attract attention. They seem to think 
it indicates great hberahty of character, and great 
breadth of view, to be continually flinging out 
against their own faith, ridiculing this, that, and 
the other point held by their Church, and shock- 
ing devout and simple-minded Orthodox by their 
quasi-profanity. Now for good Orthodox Chris- 
tians I have a great respect ; and for good Unita- 
rian Christians I have a great respect ; and for sin- 
cere, sad seekers, who can find no rest for the sole 
of their foot, I have a great respect ; but for these 
Border State men, who are neither here nor there, 
on whom you never can lay your hand, because 
they are twittering everywhere, I have a profound 
contempt. I wish people to be either one thing 
or another. I desire tli^m to believe something, 
and know w^hat it is, and stick to it. I have no 
patience with this modern outcry against creeds. 
You hear people inveigh against them, without 
for a moment thinking what they are. They 
talk as if creeds were the head and front of hu- 
man offending, the infallible sign of bigotrv and 
hypocrisy, incompatible alike with piety and wis- 
dom. Do not these Avise men know that the 
thinkers and doers of the earth, in overwhelminsj 



GALA-DAYS. 93 

majority, have been creed men ? Creeds may exist 
without rehgion, but neither rehgion, nor philos- 
ophy, nor pohtics, nor society, can exist without 
creeds. There must be a creed in the head, or there 
cannot be rehgion in the heart. You must beheve 
that Deity exists, before you can reverence Deity. 
You must beheve in the fact of humanity, or you 
£annot love your fellows. A creed is but the con- 
centration, the crystallization, of belief. Truth is 
of but little worth till it is so crystallized. Truth 
lying dissolved in oceans of error and nonsense 
and ignorance makes but a feeble diluent. It 
swashes everywhere, but to deluge, not to benefit. 
Precipitate it, and you have the salt of the earth. 
Political opposition, inorganic, is but a blind, cum- 
brous, awkward, inefficient thing ; but construct a 
platform, and immediately it becomes lithe, effi- 
cient, powerful. Even before they set foot on 
t'hese rude shores, our forefathers made a com- 
pact, and a nation was born in that day. It is on 
creeds that strong men are nourished, and that 
which nourishes the leaders into eminence is 
necessary to keep the masses from sinking. A 
man who really thinks, wdll think his way into 
light. He may turn many a somersault, but he 
will come right side up at last. But people in 
general do not think, and if they refuse to be 
walled in by other people's thoughts, they inevita- 
bly flop and flounder into pitiable prostration. So 
important is it, that a poor creed is better than 



94 GALA-DAYS. 

none at all. Truth, even adulterated as we get 
it, is a tonic. Bring forward something tangible, 
something positive, something that means some- 
thing, and it will do. But this flowery, misty, 
dreamy humanitarianism, — I say humanitarianism, 
because I don't know what that is, and I don't 
know what the thing I am driving at is, so I put 
the two unknown quantities together in a mathe- 
matical hope that minus into minus may give plus, 
— this milk-and-watery muddle of dreary nega- 
tions, that remits the world to its original fluidic 
state of chaos, I spew it out of my mouth. It 
was not on such pap our Caesars fed that made 
them grow so great. I believe that the common 
people of early New England were such lusty 
men, because they strengthened themselves by 
gnawing at their tough old creeds. Give one 
something to believe, and he can get at it and 
believe it ; but set out butting your head against 
nothing, and the chances are that you will break 
your neck. Take a good stout Christian, or a 
good sturdy Pagan, and you find something to 
bring up against ; but with nebulous vapidists you 
are always slumping through and sprawling every- 
where. 

Of course, I do not mean that sincere and 
sensible people never change nor modify their 
faith. I wish to say, for its emphasis, if you will 
allow me, that they never do anything else ; but 
generally the change is a gradual and natural one, 



GALA-DAYS. 95 

— a growth, not a convulsion, — a reformation, not 
a revolution. When it is otherwise, it is a serious 
matter, not to be lightly done or flippantly dis- 
cussed. If you really had a religious belief, it 
threw out roots and rootlets through all your life. 
It sucked in strength from every source. It 
intertwined itself through love and labor, through 
suffering and song, about every fibre of your soul. 
You cannot pull it up or dig it up, or in any 
way displace it, without setting the very founda- 
tions of your life a-quivering. True, it may be 
best that you should do this. If it was but a 
cumberer of the ground, tear it up, root and 
branch, and plant in its stead the seeds of that 
tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. 
But such things are done with circumspection, — 
not as unto man. If you are gay and jovial about 
it, if you feel no darts of torture flashing through 
the fastnesses of your life, do not flatter yourself 
that you are making radical changes. You are 
only pulling up pig-weed to set out smart-weed, 
and the less you say about it the better. 

Now Halicarnassus is really just as Orthodox as 
I. He would not lie or steal any quicker than I. 
He would not willingly sacrifice one jot or tittle of 
his faith, and yet he is always startling you with 
small heresies. He is like a calf tied to a tree in 
the orchard by a long rope. In the exuberance of 
his glee Bossy starts from the post, tail up, in a 
liand gallop. You would think, from the way he 



96 GALA-DA Yii. 

sets out, that lie was going to race around the 
whole orchard, and probably he thinks he is him- 
self. But by the time he is fairly under full head- 
way, his rope tightens up with a jerk, and away 
he goes heels over head. The only difference is, 
that Halicarnassus knows the length of his tether, 
and always fetches up in time to escape an over- 
turn ; but other people do not know it, and they 
imagine he is going pell-mell into infidelity. Now 
I was determined to have none of this trash in a 
steamboat. One has no desire to encounter super- 
fluous risks in a country where life and limb are 
held on so uncertain a tenure as in this. There 
are quite chances enough of shipwreck without 
having any Jonahs aboard. Besides, in point of 
the fine arts, heterodoxy is worse than puns. So 
I headed him off at the first onset. But I should 
not have been so entirely successful in the attempt 
had I not been assisted by a pair of birds who 
came to distract his and our attention from a 
neighboring thicket. They wheeled — the gentle, 
graceful, sly, tantalizing things — in circles and 
ellipses, now skimming along the surface of the 
water, now swooping away in great smooth curves, 
then darting off in headlong flight and pursuit. 
" My kingdom for a gun ! " exclaimed Halicar- 
nassus with amateur ardor. 

" I am glad you have no gun," said compassion- 
ate Grande. " Why should you kill them ? " 

" Do not be alarmed," I said, soothingly, " a 
distaff would be as deadly in his hands." 



GALA-DAYS. 97 

" Do you speak by the book, Omphale ? " asked 
the Anakim, who still carried those Kew Hamp- 
shire sheep on his back. 

" We went a-ducking once down in Swamp- 
shire," I answered. 

" Did you catch any ? " queried Grande. 

" Duckings ? no," said Halicarnassus. 

" Nor ducks either," I added. " He made 
great ado with his guns, and his pouches, and his 
fanfaronade, and knocking me with his elbows 
and telling me to keep still, when no mouse could 
be more still than I, and after all he did not catch 
one." 

" Only fired once or twice," said Halicarnassus, 
"just for fun, and to show her how to do it." 

" How not to do it, you mean," said the Ana- 
kim. 

" You fired forty times," I said quietly, but 
firmly, " and the ducks would come out and look 
at you as interested as could be. You know you 
did n't scare a little meadow-hen. They knew 
you could n't hit." 

"Trade off your ducks against my sheep, and 
call it even ? " chuckled the Anakim ; and so, chat- 
ting and happy, we glided along, enjoying, not en- 
tranced, comfortable, but not sublime, content to 
drink in the sunny sweetness of the summer day, 
happy only from the pleasant sense of being, tan- 
gling each other in silly talk out of mere wanton- 
ness, purling up bubbles of airy nothings in sheer 



98 GALA-DAYS. 

effervescence of animal delight ; falling into peri- 
odic fits of useful knowledge, under the influence 
of which we consulted our maps and our watches 
in a conjoint and clamorous endeavor to locate 
ourselves, which would no sooner be satisfactorily 
accomplished than something would turn up and 
set our calculations and islands adrift, and we 
would have to begin new. Dome Island we made 
out by its shape, unquestionably ; Whortleberry 
we hazarded on the strength of its bushes ; " Hen 
and Chicks," by a biggish island brooding half 
a dozen little ones ; Flea Island, from a certain 
snappishness of aspect ; Half-Way Island, by our 
distance from dinner; Anthony's Nose, by its 
unlikeness to anything else, certainly not from its 
resemblance to noses in general, let alone the 
individual nose of Mark Antony, or Mad An- 
thony, or any Anthony between. And then we 
disembarked and posted ourselves on the coach- 
top for a six-mile ride to Champlain ; and Grande 
said, her face still buried in the map, " Here on 
the left is ' Trout Brook ' running into the lake, 
and a cross on it, and ' Ld. Howe fell, 1758.' 
That is worth seeing." 

" Yes," I said, " America loved his brother." 
" America loved Aim," howled Halicarnassus, 
thinkinor to correct me and avena;e himself. Now 
I knew quite well that America loved him, and 
did not love his brother, but with the mention of 
his name came into my mind the tender, grieved 



GALA-DAYS. 99 

surprise of that pathetic little appeal, and I just said 
it, — thought it aloud, — assuming historic knowl- 
edge enough in my listeners to prevent miscon- 
ception. But to this day Halicarnassus persists 
in thinking, or at least in asserting, that I tripped 
over Lord Howe. As he does not often get such 
a chance, I let him comfort himself with it as much 
as he can ; but that is the way with your whipper- 
snapper critics. They put on their " specs," and 
pounce down upon some microscopic mote, which 
they think to be ignorance, but which is really 
the diamond-dust of imamnation. " But let us 
see the place," said Grande. " We must drive 
within sio-ht of it." 

" Yes," I said. " Halicarnassus, ask the driver 
to be sure to tell us where Lord Howe fell." 

" Fell into the brook," said that Oracle, and sat 
as stiff as a post. 

Ticonderoga, — up-hill and down-hill for six 
miles, white houses and dark, churches and shops, 
and playing children and loungers, and mills, and 
rough banks and haggard woods, just like any other, 
somewhat straggling country village. O no ! 
O no !^ There are few like this. / have seen 
no other. Churches and shops and all the para- 
phernalia of busy, bustling common life there may 
be, but we have no eyes for such. Yonder on the 
green high plain wdiich we have already entered is 
a simple guide-post, guiding you, not on to Canada, 
to New York, to Boston, but back into the dead 



100 GALA-DAYS. 

century that lived so fiercely and lies so still. We 
stand on ground over-fought by hosts of heroes. 
Here rise still the breastworks, grass-grown and 
harmless now, behind which men awaited bravely 
the shock of furious onset, before which men 
rushed as bravely to duty and to death. Slowly 
we wind among the little squares of intrenchments, 
whose deadliest occupants now are peaceful cows 
and sheep, slowly among tall trees, — ghouls that 
thrust out their slimy, cold fingers everywhere, 
battening on horrid banquets, — nay, sorrowful 
trees, not so. Your gentle, verdant vigor nour- 
ishes no lust of blood. Rather you sprang in pity 
from the cold ashes at your feet, that every breeze 
quivering through your mournful leaves may harp 
a requiem for Polydorus. Alighting at the land- 
ing-place we stroll up the hill and among the ruins 
of the old forts, and breast ourselves the surging 
battle-tide. For war is not to this generation 
what it has been. The rust of long disuse has 
been rubbed off by the iron hand of fate, — shall 
we not say, rather, by the good hand of our God 
upon us ? — and the awfal word stands forth once 
more, red-lettered and real. Marathon, Waterloo, 
Lexington, are no longer the conflict of numbers 
against numbers, nor merely of principles against 
principles, but of men against men. And as we 
stand on this silent hill, the prize of so many 
struggles, our own hearts swell with the hopes 
and sink with the fears that its green old bluffs 



GALA-DAYS. 101 

have roused. Up from yon water-side came stealincr 
the Green-Mountain Boys, with their grand and 
grandiloquent leader, and, at the very gateway 
where we stand, as tradition says, (^et jMias Dii 
numine firuient,') he thundered out, with brave, 
barbaric voice, the imperious summons, " In the 
name of the great Jehovah and the Continental 
Congress." No wonder the startled, half-dressed 
commander is confounded, and " the pretty face 
of his wife peering over his shoulder " is filled 
with terror. Well may such a motley crew 
frighten the fair Europeanne. " Frenchmen I 
know, and Indians I know, but who are ye ? " 
Ah ! Sir Commander, so bravely bedight, these 
are the men whom your parliamentary knights 
are to sweep with their brooms into the Atlantic 
Ocean. Bring on your b'esoms, fair gentlemen ; 
yonder is Champlain, and a lake is as good to 
drown in as an ocean. Look at them, my lords, 
and look many times before you leap. They are 
a rough set, roughly clad, a stout-limbed, stout- 
hearted race, insubordinate, independent, irrepres- 
sible, almost as troublesome to their friends as to 
their foes; but there is good stock in them, — brain 
and brawn, and brain and brawn will yet cariy the 
day over court and crown, in the name of the 
right, which shall overpower all things. We clam- 
ber down into arched passages, choked with debris, 
over floors tangled with briers, and join in thei 
wild wassail of the bold outlaw, fired by his victo- 



102 GALA-DAYS. 

rious career. We clamber up the rugged sides 
and wind around to the headland. Brilliant in 
the " morning-shine," exultant in the pride and 
pomp of splendid preparation, ardent for conquest 
and glory, Abercrombie sails down the lovely in- 
land sea, to sail back dismantled and disgraced. 
The retrieving fleet of Amherst follows, as brilliant 
and as eager, — to gain the victory of numbers 
over valor, but to lose its fruit, as many a blood- 
bought prize has since been lost, snatched from the 
conqueror's hand by the traitor, doubt. But this 
is only the prologue of our great drama. Allen 
leaps first upon the scene, bucklered as no warrior 
ever was since the days of Homer or before. 
Then Arnold comes flying in, wresting laurels 
from defeat, — Arnold, who died too late. Here 
Schuyler walks up at night, his military soul vexed 
within him by the sleeping guards and the inter- 
mittent sentinels, his gentle soul harried by the 
rustic ill-breeding of his hinds, his magnanimous 
soul cruelly tortured by the machinations of jeal- 
ousy and envy and evil-browed ambition. Yonder 
on the hill Burgoyne's battery threatens death, 
and Lincoln avenges us of Burgoyne. Let the 
curtain fall ; a bloodier scene shall follow. 
***** 
And then we re-embark on Lake Champlain, 
and all the summer afternoon sail down through 
^phantom fleets, under the frowning ramparts of 
phantom forts, past grim rows of deathful-throated 



GALA-DA YS. 103 

camion, through serried hosts of warriors, with 
bright swords gleaming and strong arms hfted and 
stern hps parted ; but from hps of man or throat 
of cannon comes no sound. A thousand oars 
strike through the leaping waves, but not a plash 
breaks on the listening ear. A thousand white 
sails swell to the coming breeze, that brings glad 
greeting from the inland hills, but nothing breaks 
the silences of time. 

And of all beautiful things that could have been 
thought of or hoped for, what should come to 
crown our queen of days but a thunder-storm, a 
most real and vivid thunder-storm, marshalling up 
from the west its grand, cumulose clouds ; black, 
jagged, bulging with impatient, prisoned thunder 
biding their time, sharp and fierce against the 
brilliant sky, spreading swiftly over the heavens, 
fusing into one great gray pall, dropping a dim 
curtain of rain between us and the land, clos- 
ing down upon us a hollow hemisphere pierced 
with shafts of fire and deafening with unseen 
thunders, wresting us ofi^ from the friendly . skies 
and shores, wrapping us into an awful solitude. 
O Princess Roh-an, come to me ! come from the 
hidden caves, where you revel in magical glories, 
come up from your coralline caves in the mysteri- 
ous sea, come from those Eastern lands of night- 
ingale, roses, and bulbuls, where your tropical soul 
was born and rocked in the lap of the lotus ! O 
sunny Southern beauty, lost amongst Northern 



104 GALA-DAYS. 

snows, flush forth in your mystical splendor from 
the ruby wine of Hafiz, float down from your 
clouds of the sunset with shining garments of hght, 
open the golden door of your palace domed in a 
lily, glide over these inky waves, O my queen of 
all waters, come to me wherever you are, with 
your pencil dipped in darkness, starry with dia- 
mond dews and spanned with the softness of rain- 
bows, and set on this land-locked Neptune your 
cross of the Legion of Honor, assure to the angry 
god his bowl in Valhalla, that the thunder-vexed 
lake may be soothed with its immortality ! 

But the storm passes on, the clouds sweep mag- 
nificently away, and the glowing sky flings up its 
arch of promise. The lucent waters catch its 
gleam and spread in their depths a second arch as 
beautiful and bright. So, haloed with magnifi- 
cence, an earth-born bark on fairy waters, com- 
pletely circled by this glory of the skies and seas, 
we pass through our triumphal gateway " deep 
into the dying day," and are presently doused in 
the mud at Rouse's Point. Rouse's Point is un- 
doubtedly a very good place, and they w^ere good 
women there, and took good care of us ; but 
Rouse's Point is a dreadful place to w^ake up in 
when you have been in Dream-Land, — espe- 
cially when a circus is there, singing and shouting 
under your windows all night long. I wonder 
when circus-people sleep, or do they not sleep at 
all, but keep up a perpetual ground and lofty 



GALA-DAYS. 105 

tumbling ? From Rouse's Point through Northern 
New York, through endless woods and leagues of 
brilliant fire-weed, the spirit of the dead flames 
that raved through the woods, past corn-fields that 
look rather "skimpy," certainly not to be compared 
to a corn-field I wot of, whose owner has a mono- 
mania on the subject of corn and potatoes, and 
fertilizes his fields with his own blood and brain, 
— a snort, a rush, a shriek, and the hundred miles 
is accomplished, and we are at Ogdensburg, a 
smart little town, like all American towns, with 
handsome residences up, and handsomer ones 
going up, with haberdashers' shops, and lawyers' 
offices, and judges' robes, and most hospitable 
citizens, — one at least, — and all the implements 
and machinery of government and self-direction, 
not excepting a huge tent for political speaking 
and many political speeches, and everybody alert, 
public-spirited, and keyed up to the highest pitch. 
All this is interesting, but we have seen it ever 
since we were born, and we look away with wist- 
ful eyes to the north ; for this broad, majestic 
river stretching sky-ward like \he ocean, is the 
St. Lawrence. Up this river, on the day of St. 
Lawrence, three hundred years ago, came the 
mariner of St. Malo, — turning in from the sea 
till his straining eyes beheld on both sides land, — 
and planted the lilies of France. Now it is the 
boundary line of empires. Those green banks 
on the other side are a foreign country, and for 



106 GALA-DAYS. 

the first time I am not monarch of all I survey. 
That fine little city, with stately trees towering 
from the midst of its steeples and gray roofs, is 
Prescott. At the right rise the ramparts of Fort 
Wellington, whence cannon-balls came hissing 
over to Ogdensburg some fifty years ago. We 
stand within a pretty range, suppose they should 
try it again ! Farther on still is a plain, gray 
tower, where a handful of " patriots " intrenched 
and destroyed themselves with perverse martyro- 
phobia in a foolish and fruitless endeavor. The 
afternoon is before us ; suppose we row over ; 
here is a boat, and doubtless a boatman, or the 
ferry-steamer will be here directly. By no means ; 
a ferry-steamer is thoroughly commonplace ; you 
can ferry-steam anywhere. Row, brothers, row, 
perhaps you will never have the chance again. 
Lightly, hghtly row through the green waters of 
the great St. Lawrence, through the sedge and 
rank grass that wave still in his middle depths, 
over the mile and a half of great rushing billows 
that rock our little boat somewhat roughly ; but I 
am not afraid, — for I can swim. 

" You can, can you ? " says the Anakim, incred- 
ulously. 

" Indeed I can, can't I, Halicarnassus ? " ap- 
pealingly. 

" Like a brick ! " ejaculates that worthy, pulhng 
away at the oars, and on we shoot, steadily nearing 
the rustic stone city that looks so attractive, so 



GALA-DAYS. 107 

different from our hasty, brittle, shingly American 
half-minute houses, —r massive, permanent, full of 
character and solid worth. And now our tiny 
craft buts against the pier, and we ascend from the 
Jesuit river and stand on British soil. No stars 
and stripes here, but Saint George and his dragon 
fight out their never-ending brawl. No war, no 
volunteering, no Congress here ; but peace and a 
Parliament and a Queen, God bless her ! and this 
is her realm, a kingdom. Now if it had been a 
year ago I do not know that I should not, like 
Columbus, have knelt to kiss these dingy stones, 
so much did I love and reverence England, and 
whatever bore the dear Eno-lish name. But we 
— they, rather — have changed all that. Among 
the great gains of this memorable year, — among 
the devotions, the sacrifices, the heroisms, — all 
the mighty, noble, and ennobling deeds by which 
we stand enriched forevermore, — there broods the 
shadow of one irreparable loss, — the loss of Eng- 
land. Success or failure can make no difference 
there. English gold, English steel, English pluck, 
stand to-day as always ; but English integrity, 
English stanchness, English love, where are they ? 
Just where Prescott is, now that we have come 
to it ; for the substantial stone city a mile and 
a half away turns out to be a miserable little 
dirty, hutty, smutty, stagnant owl-cote when you 
get into it. What we took for stone is stoHdity. 
It is old, but its age is squalid, not picturesque. 



108 GALA-DAYS, 

We stumble through the alleys that answer for 
streets, and come to the t' Dog and Duck," a 
dark, dingy ale-room, famous for its fine ale, we 
are told, or perhaps it was beer : I don't remember. 
It is not in male nature to go by on the other side 
of such a thing, and we enter, — they to test the 
beverage, Grande and I to make observation of 
the surroundings. We take position in the pas- 
sage between the bar-room and parlor. A yellow- 
haired Saxon child, with bare legs and fair face, 
crawls out from some inner hollow to the door, 
and impends dangerous on the sill, throwing 
numerous scared backward ixlances over his shoul- 
der. The parlor is taken bodily out of old Eng- 
lish novels, a direct descendant, slightly furbished 
up and modernized, of the Village inn parlor of 
Goldsmith, — homely, clean, and comfortless. A 
cotton tidy over the rocking-chair bewrays, 
wrought into its crocheted gorgeousness, the 
name of Uncle Tom. This I cannot stand. 
Time may bring healing, but now the wound is 
still fresh. " O, you did Uncle-Tom it famously," 
I hurl out, doubling my fist at the British lion 
which glares at me from that cotton tidy. " I 
remember those days. O yes ! you were ram- 
pant on Uncle Tom. You are a famous friend 
of Uncle Tom, with your Exeter Halls, and your 
Lord Shaftesburys, and your Duchess of Suther- 
lands ! Cry your pretty eyes out over Uncle 
Tom, dear, tender-hearted British women. Write 



GALA-DAYS. 109 

appealing letters to your sisters over the waters, 
affectionate, conscientious kindred ; canonize your 
saint, our sin, in tidies, and chair-covers, and 
Christmas slippers, — we know how to take you 
now ; we have found out what all that is worth ; 
w^e can appraise your tears by the bottle — in 
pounds, shillings, and pence." But the beer-men 
curtail my harangue, so I shake my departing 
fist at the cowering lion, and, leaving this British 
institution, proceed to investigate another British 
institution, — the undaunted English army, in 
its development in Fort Wellington. A wall 
shuts the world out from those sacred premises ; 
a stile lets the world in, — over which stile we 
step and stand on the fort grounds. A party of 
soldiers are making good cheer in a comer of the 
pasture, — perhaps I ought to say parade-ground. 
As no sentinel accosts us, we hunt up one, and 
inquire if the fort is accessible. He does not 
know, but inclines to the opinion that it is. We go 
up the hill, walk round the wall, and mark well 
her bulwarks, till we come to a great gate, but it 
refuses to turn. The walls are too high to scale, 
besides possible pickets on the other side. I have 
no doubt in the world that we could creep under, 
for the gate has shrunk since it was made, and 
needs to have a tuck let down ; but what would 
become of dignity ? Grande and the Anakim 
make a reconnoissance in force, to see if some 
unwary postern-gate may not permit entrance. 



110 GALA-DAYS. 

Hallcarnassus fumbles in his pockets for edge- 
tools, as if Queen Victoria, who rules the waves, 
on w^hose dominions the sun never sets, whose 
morning drum-beat encircles the world, w^ould leave 
the main gate of hpr* main fort on one of the 
frontiers of her empire so insecurely defended 
that a single American can carry it with his 
fruit-knife. Such ideas I energetically enforce, till 
I am cut short by the slow retrogression of the 
massive gate on ponderous hinges turning. 

" What about the fruit-knife ? " inquires Hali- 
carnassus as I pass in. The reconnoitring party 
return to report a bootless search, and are electri- 
fied to find the victory already gained. 

" See the good of having been through college," 
exults Halicarnassus. 

" How did you do it?" asks Grande, admiringly. 

" By genius and assiduity," answers Halicar- 
nassus. 

" And lifting the latch," I append, for I have 
been examining the mechanism of the gate since I 
came in, and have made a discovery which dis- 
lodges my savant from his pinnacle ; namely, that 
the only fastening on the gate is a huge wooden 
latch, which not one of us had sense enough to lift ; 
but then who thinks of taking a fort by assault and 
battery on the latch ? Halicarnassus hit upon it 
by mere accident, and I therefore remorselessly 
expose him. Then we saunter about the place, 
and, seeing a woman eying us suspiciously from 



GALA-DAYS. Ill 

an elevated window, w^e show the white feather 
and ask her if we may come in, which, seeing we 
have been in for some ten minutes, we undoubt- 
edly may ; and then we mount the ramparts and 
peer into Labrador and Hudson's Bay and the 
North Pole, and, turning to a softer sky, gaze from 
a " foreign clime " upon our own dear land, home 
of freedom, hope of the nations, eye-sore of the 
Devil, rent by one set of his minions, and ridiculed 
by another, but coming out of her furnace-fires, if 
God please and man will, heartier and holier, be- 
cause freer and truer, than ever before. O my 
country, beautiful and beloved, my hope, my 
desire, my joy, and my crown of rejoicing, im- 
measurably dearer in the agony of your bloody 
sweat than in the high noon of your proud pros- 
perity ! standing for the first time beyond your 
borders, and looking upon you from afar, now and 
forevermore out of a full heart I breathe to you 
benedictions. 




IV. 




OWN the St. Lawrence in a steamer, 
up the St. Lawrence on the maps, we 
sail through another day full of eager 
interest. Everything is fresh, new, 
novel. Is it because we are in high latitudes that 
the river and the country look so high ? I could 
fancy that we are on a plateau, overlooking a con- 
tinent. Now the^ water expands on all sides like 
an ocean meeting the sky, and now we are sailing 
through hay-fields and country orchards, as if the 
St. Lawrence had taken a turn into our back-yard. 
We hug the Canada shore, and thi^k woods come 
down the banks dipping their summer tresses in 
the cool Northern river, — broad pasture-lands 
stretch away, away from river to sky, — brown, 
dubious villages sail by at long intervals. On the 
distant southern shore America has stationed her 
outposts, and unfrequent spires attest a civilized, if 
remote life. In the sunny day all things are sun- 
ny, save when a Claude Lorraine glass lends a dark, 
rich mystery to every hill and cloud. The Claude 



GALA-DAYS. 113 

Lorraine glass is a rara avis., and not only gives 
new lights to the scenery, bnt brings out the hu- 
man nature on board in great force. The Anakim 
tells us of one man who asked him in a confiden- 
tial aside, if it was a show, whereat we all laugh. 
Even I laugh at the man's ignorance, • — I, a thief, 
an assassin, a traitor, who six weeks ago had never 
heard of a Claude Lorraine glass ; but nobody 
can tell who has not tried it how much credit one 
gets for extensive knowledge, if only he holds his 
tongue. In all my life I am afraid I shall never 
learn as much as I have been inferred to know 
simply because I kept still. • 

Down the St. Lawrence in an English steamer, 
where everything is not so much English as John 
Bull-y. The servants at the table are thoroughly 
and amusingly yellow-plush, — if that is the word 
I want, and if it is not that, it is another ; for I 
am quite sure of my idea, though not of the name 
that belongs to it. The servants are smooth and 
sleek and intense. They serve as if it was their 
business, and a weighty business at that, demand- 
ing all the energies of a created being. Accord- 
ingly they give their minds to it. The chieftain 
yonder, in white choker and locks profiisely oiled 
and brushed into a resplendent expanse, bears 
Atlas on his shoulders. His lips are compressed, 
his brow contracted, his eyes alert, his whole man- 
ner as absorbed as if it were a nation, and not a 
plum-pudding, that he is engineering through a 



114 GALA-DAYS. 

crisis. Lord Palmerston is nothing to him, I ven- 
ture to say. I know the only way to accomphsh 
anythirfg is to devote yourself to it ; still I cannot 
conceive how anybody can give himself up so com- 
pletely to a dinner, even if it is his business and 
duty. However, I have nothing to complain of in 
the results, for we are well served, only for a trifle 
too much obviousness. Order and system are un- 
doubtedly good things, but I don't hke to see an 
ado made about them. Our waiters stand behind, 
at given stations, with prophetic dishes in uphfted 
hands, and, at a certain signal from the arch- waiter, 
down they come lil^ the clash of fate. Now I 
suppose this is all very well, but for me I never 
was fond of mihtary life. Under my housekeeping 
we browse indiscriminately. When we have noth- 
incr else to do, we have a meal. If it is nearer 
noon than morning, we call it dinner. If it is 
nearer night than noon, we call it supper, unless 
we have fashionable friends with us, and then we 
call it dinner, and the other thing lunch ; and ten 
to one it is so scattered about that it has no name 
at all. At breakfast you will be hkely to find me 
on the door-step with a bowl of bread and milk, 
while Hallearnassus sits on the bench opposite 
and brandishes a chicken-bone with the cat mew- 
ing furiously for it at his feet. A surreptitious 
doughnut is sweet and dyspeptic over the morning 
paper, and gingerbread is always to be had by 
systematic and intelligent foraging. Consequently 



GALA-DAYS. 115 

this British drill and discipline are thoroughly 
alarming to me, and I am surprised and grateful 
to find that we are not Individually regulated by 
a time-table. I expect a drum-beat; — one, In- 
cision ; two, mastication ; three, deglutition ; — but 
what tyranny does one not expect to find under 
monarchical institutions ? Put that Into your next 
volume. Intelligent British tourist. 

Down the St. Lawrence with mllllonnaires, and 
artists, and gay young girls, and sallow-faced inva- 
lids, and weary clergymen and men of business 
who do not know what to do with their unwonted 
leisure and find pleasuring a most unmitigated 
bore, and mothers with sick children, dear little 
unnatural pale faces and heavy eyes, — may your 
angels bring you health, tiny ones ! — and, most 
interesting of all to me, a party of priests and nuns 
on^thelr travels. They sit near me, and I can see 
them without turning my head, and hear them 
without marked listening. The priests are sleek- 
headed men, and such as sleep o' nights, ruddy, 
rotund, robust, with black hair and white hands, 
well-dressed, well-fed, well-to-do, jolly, gentleman- 
ly, cllque-y, sensible, shrewd, au fait. The nuns 
— now I am vexed to look at them. . Are nuns 
expected to be any more dead to the world than 
priests? Then I should like to know why they 
must make such frights of themselves, while priests 
go about like Christians ? Why shall a nun walk 
black, and gaunt, and lank, with a white towel 



116 GALA-DAYS. 

wrapped around her face, all possible beauty and 
almost all attractiveness despoiled by her hideously 
unbecoming dress, while priests wear their hair and 
their hats and their coats and their collars like any 
other gentleman ? Why are the women to be set 
up as targets, while the men may pass unnoticed 
and unknown ? If the woman's head must be 
shorn and shaven, why not the man's ? It is not 
fair. I can think of no reason, pretext, or excuse, 
unless it is to be found in the fact that women are 
more beautiful than men, and need greater disfig- 
urement to make them ugly. That is a fact which 
I have long suspected, and observations made on 
this journey confirm my suspicions, — intensify 
them into certainty. An ugly woman is hand- 
somer than a handsome man, — if you examine 
them closely. She is finer-grained, more soft, more 
delicate. Men are animals more than women. Ldo 
not now mean the generic sense in which we are 
all animals, but specifically and superficially. Men 
look more like horses and cows. See our brave sol- 
diers returnino; from the wars — Heaven's blessing 
rest upon them ! — grand, but are they not grufP? 
A woman's face may be browned, roughened, and 
reddened by exposure, yet her skin is always skin ; 
but often when a man's face has been sheltered 
from storm and shine, his skin is hide. His mane 
is not generally so long and flowing as a horse's, 
but there it is. Once, in a car, a man in front of 
me put his arm on the back of his seat and fell 



GALA-DAYS. 117 

asleep. Presently his hand dropped over, and I 
looked at it, — a mass of broad, brawny vital- 
ity, great pipes of veins, great crescents of nails, 
great furrows at the joints, and you might cut 
a fine sirloin of beef off the ball of the thumb ; 
and this is a hand ! I call it an ox. A woman's 
hand, by hard labor, spreads and cracks, and 
sprouts bunches at tlie joints, and becomes tuber- 
ous at the ends of the fingers, but you can see that 
it is a deformity and not nature. It tells a sad 
story of neglect, of labor, perhaps of heartlessness, 
cruelty, suffering. But this man's hand w^as born 
so. You would not think of pitying him any more 
than you would pity an elephant for being an ele- 
phant instead of an antelope. A woman's hair is 
silky and soft, and, if not always smooth, suscepti- 
ble of smoothness. A man's hair is shag. If he 
tries to make it anything else, he does not mend 
the matter. Ceasing to be shag, it does not become 
beauty, but foppishness, effeminacy. Miss Nancy- 
ism. A man is a brute by the law of his nature. 
Let him ape a woman, and he does not cease to be 
brutal, though he does become ridiculous. The 
only thing for him to do is to be the best kind of a 
brute. 

In all of which remarks there is nothing deroga- 
tory to a man, — nothing at wdiich any one need 
take offence. I do not say that manhood is not a 
very excellent kind of creation. Everything is 
good, in its line. I would just as soon have been 



118 GALA-DAYS. 

a beetle as a woman, if I had never been a woman, 
and did not know what it was. I don't suppose a 
horse is at all crestfallen because he is a horse. 
On the contrary, if he is a thorough-bred, blood 
horse, he is a proud and happy fellow, prancing, 
spirited, magnificent.** So a man may be so mag- 
nificently manly that one shall say. Surely this is 
the monarch of the universe ; and hide and shag 
and mane shall be vitalized with a matchless glory. 
Let a man make himself grand in his own sphere, 
and not sit down and moan because he is only a 
connectino; link between a horse and a woman. 

I suppose Mother Church is fully cognizant of 
the true state of affairs, and thinks men already 
sufficiently Satyric, but woman must be ground 
down as much as possible, or the world will not be 
fended off. And ground down they are in body 
and soul. O Mother Church ! as I look upon these 
nuns, I do not love you. You have done many 
wise and right deeds. You have been the ark of 
the testimony, the refuge of the weary, the dis- 
penser of alms, the consoler of the sorrowful, the 
hope of the dying, the blessing of the dead. You 
are convenient now, wieldy in an election, effective 
when a gold ring is missing from the toilette cush- 
ion, admirable in your machinery, and astonishing 
in your persistency and power. But what have 
you done with these women? In what secret 
place, in what dungeon of darkness and despair, in 
what chains of torpidity and oblivion, have- you 



GALA-DAYS. 119 

hidden away their souls? They are twenty-five 
and thirty years old, hut they are not women. 
They are nothing in the world but grown-up chil- 
dren. Their expression, their observation, their 
interests, are infantile. There is no character in 
their faces. There are marks of pettishness, but 
not of passion. Nothing deep, tender, beneficent, 
maternal, is there. Time has done his part, but 
life has left no marks. Their smiles and laughter 
are the merriment of children, beautiful in children, 
but painful here. Mother Church, you have 
dwarfed these women, helplessly, hopelessly. You 
accomplish results, but you deteriorate humanity. 

Down the St. Lawrence, the great, melancholy 
river, grand only in its grandeur, solitary, unap- 
proachable, cut off from the companionship, the 
activities, and the interests of life by its rocks and 
rapids ; yet calm and conscious, working its work 
in silent state. 

The rapids are bad for traffic, but charming 
for travellers ; and what is a little revenue more 
or less, to a sensation ? There is not danger 
enough to awaken terror, but there is enough to 
require vigilance ; just enough to exhilarate, to 
flush the cheek, to brighten the eye, to quicken 
the breath; just enough for spice and sauce and 
salt ; just enough for you to play at storm and 
shipwreck, and heroism in danger. The rocking 
and splashing of the early rapids is mere fun ; but 
when you get on, when the steamer slackens 



120 GALA-DAYS. 

speed, and a skiff puts off from shore, and an 
Indian pilot comes on board, and mounts to the 
pilot-house, you begin to feel that matters are get- 
ting serious. But the pilot is chatting carelessly 
with two or three by-standers, so it cannot be 
much. Ah ! this sudden cessation of something ! 
This unnatural quiet. The machinery has stop- 
ped. What ! the boat is rushing straight on to 
the banks. H-w-k ! A whole shower of spray is 
dashed into our faces. Little shrieks and laughter, 
and a sudden hopping up from stools, and a sudden 
retreat from the railing to the centre of the deck. 
Staggering, quivering, aghast, the boat reels and 
careens. Seethe and plunge the angry waters, 
whirling, foaming, furious. Look at the pilot. 
No chatting now, no by-standers, but fixed eyes 
and firm lips, every muscle set, every nerve 
tense. Yes, it is serious. Serious ! close by us, 
seeming scarcely a yard away, frowns a black 
rock. The maddened waves dash up its sullen 
back, the white, passionate surf surges into its 
wrathful jaws. Here, there, before, behind, black 
rocks and a wild uproar of waters, through all 
which Providence and our pilot lead us safely into 
the still deep beyond, and we look into each other's 
faces and smile. 

And now the sunset reddens on the water, red- 
dens on the bending sky and the beautiful clouds, 
and men begin to come around with cards and 
converse of the different hotels in the Montreal 



GALA-DAYS. 121 

that is to be ; one tells us that the Prince of Wales 
beamed royal light upon the St. Lawrence Hall, 
and we immediately decide to make the balance 
true by patronizing its rival Donegana, whereupon 
a man — a mere disinterested spectator of course 
— informs us in confidence that the Done^-ana is 
nothing but ruins ; he should not think we would 
go there ; burnt down a few years ago, — a shabby 
place, kept by a grass widow ; but w^hen was 
American ever scared off by the sound of a ruin ? 
So Donegana it is, the house with the softly flowing 
Italian name ; and then we pass under the arch of 
the famous Victoria Bridge, w^hose corner-stone, or 
cap-stone, or whatever it is that bridges have, was 
laid by the Prince of Wales. (And to this day I 
do not know how the flag-staff of our boat cleared 
the arch. It was ten feet above it, I should think, 
and I looked at it all the time, and yet it shrivelled 
under in the most laughable yet baffling manner.) 
In the mild twilight we disembarked, and were 
quickly omnibused to the relics of Donegana, which 
turned out to be very well, very well indeed for 
ruins, with a smart stone front, and I don't know 
but stone all the wav throuo-h, with the usual al- 
lowance of lace curtains, and carpets, and gilding 
in the pai'lors, notwithstanding flames and conjugal 
desolation ; also a band welcomed us in the gas-lit 
square adjoining, and we w^ere hospitably entreat- 
ed and transmitted to the breakfast-table next 
morning in perfect sight-seeing trim ; only the 



122 GALA-DAYS. 

Anakim was* cross, and muttered that they had 
sent him out in the village to sleep among the 
hens, and there was a cackling and screaming and 
chopping off of heads all night long. But the 
breakfast-table assured us that many a cackle must 
have been the swan-song of death. Hahcarnas- 
sus wondered if something might not be invented 
to consume superfluous noise, as great factories 
consume their own smoke, but the Anakim said 
there was no call for any new invention in that 
line so long; as Halicarnassus continued in his 
present appetite, — with a significant glance at the 
plump chicken which the latter was vigorously 
converting into mammalia, and which probably 
was the very one that disturbed the Anakim's 
repose. And then we discussed the day's plan of 
operations. Halicarnassus said he had been diplo- 
matizing for a carriage. The man in the office 
told him he could have one for five dollars. He 
thought that was rather hio;h. Man said it was 
the regular price ; could n't get one for any less in 
the city. Halicarnassus went out and saw one 
standing idle in the market-place. Asked the 
price. Three dollars. For how long ? Drive you 
all round the city. Sir ; see all the sights. Then 
he went back and told the man at the office. 

" Well," I said, after he had swallowed a 
wassail-bowl of coffee, and showed no disposition 
to go on, "what did you do then?" 

" Came In to breakfast." 



GALA-DAYS. 123 

" Did n't you tell the clerk you would not take 
Ills carriage ? " 

''No." 

" Did n't you tell the other man you would take 
his ? " 

^'■No." 

" What did you do ? " 

" Let it work. Don't be in a hurry. Give a 
thing time to work." 

" And suppose it should work you out of any 
carriacre at all ? " 

" No danger." And to be sure, when we had 
finished breakfast, the three-dollar hack was there 
awaHing our pleasure. Our pleasure was to drive 
out into the British possessions, first around the 
mountain, which is quite a mountain for a villa, 
though nothing to speak of as a mountain, with 
several handsome residences on its sides, and a 
good many not so handsome ; but the mountain 
is a pet of Montreal, and, as I said, quite the thing 
for a cockney mountain. Then we went to the 
French Cathedral, which is, I believe, the great 
gun of ecclesiastical North America, but it hung 
fire with me. It was large, but not great. There 
was no unity. It was not impressive. It was 
running over with frippery, — olla podrida crop- 
ping out everywhere. It confused you. It dis- 
tracted you. It wearied you. You sighed for 
somewhat simple, quiet, restful. The pictures 
were pronounced poor. I don't know whether 



124 * GAL A -DAYS. 

they were or not. I never can tell a picture as a 
cook tells her mince-pie meat, by tasting it. One 
picture is a revealer and one is a daub ; but they 
are alike to me at first glance. For a picture has 
an individuality all its own. You must woo.it 
with tender ardor, or it will not yield up its heart. 
The chance look sees only color and contour ; but 
as you gaze the color glows, the contour throbs, 
the hidden soul heaves the inert canvas with the 
solemn palpitations of life. Art is dead no longer, 
but informed with divine vitality. There is no 
picture but Hope crowned and radiant, or pale and 
patient Sorrow, or the tender sanctity of Love. 
The landscape of the artist is neither painting nor 
nature, but summer fields and rosy sunsets over- 
flooded with his own inward light. Only from her 
Heaven-anointed monarch, man, can Nature re- 
ceive her knightly accolade. And shall one detect 
the false or recognize the true by the minute- 
hand ? I suppose so, since some do. But I can- 
not. People who live among the divinities may 
know the goddess, for all her Spartan arms, her 
naked knee, and knotted robe ; but I, earth-born 
among earth-born, must needs behold the auroral 
blush, the gliding gait, the flowing vestment, and 
the divine odor of her purple hair. 

In the vestibule of the French Cathedral, I be- 
lieve it is, you will behold a heart-rending sight in 
a glass case, namely, a group of children, babies 
in long clothes and upwards, in a dreadful state of 



GALA-DAYS. ' 125 

being devoured by cotton-flannel pigs. Their 
poor little white frocks are stained with blood, and 
they are knocked about piteously in various stages 
of mutilation. A label in front informs you that 
certain innocents in certain localities are subject 
to this shocking treatment ; and you are earnestly 
conjured to drop your penny or your pound into 
the box, to rescue them from a fate so tei-rible. 
You must be a cannibal if you can withstand this 
appeal. Suifering that you only hear of, you can 
forget, but suffering going on right under your 
eyes is not so easily disposed of. 

Leaving the pigs and papooses, we will go to — 
which of the nunneries? The Gray? Yes. But 
when you come home, everybody will tell you that 
you ought to have visited the Black Nunnery. 
The Gray is not to be mentioned in the same year. 
Do not, however, flatter yourself that in choosing 
the Black you will be any more enviable ; there 
will not be wanting myriads who will assure you, 
that, not having seen the Gray, you might as well 
harve seen nothing at all. To the Gray Nunnery 
went we, and saw pictures and altars and saints 
and candlesticks, and little dove-cot floors of gal- 
leries jutting out, where a few women crossed, 
genuflected, and mumbled, and an old woman came 
out of a door above one of them,_ and asked the 
people below not to talk so loud, because they dis- 
turbed the worshippers ; but the people kept talk- 
ing, and presently she came out again, and repeated 



126 ■ GALA-DAYS. 

her request, with a little of the Inquisition in her 
tones and gestures, — no more than was justifiable 
under the circumstances : bnt she looked straight 
at me ; and O old woman ! it was not I that talked, 
nor my party. We were noiseless as mice. It 
was that woman over there in a Gothic bonnet, 
with a bunch of roses under the roof as big as a 
cabbage. Presently the great doors opened, and a 
procession of nuns marched in chanting their gib- 
berish. Of course they wore the disguise of those 
abominable caps, with gray, uncouth dresses, the 
skirts taken up in front and pinned behind, after 
the manner of washerwomen. Yet there were 
faces among them on which the eye loved to lin- 
ger, — some not too young for their years, some 
furtive glances, some demure looks from the yet 
undeadened youth under those ugly robes, — some 
faces of struggle and some of victory. O Mother 
Church, here I do not beheve in you ! These 
natures are gnarled, not nurtured. These elabo- 
rately reposeful faces are not natural. These 
downcast eyes and droning voices are not natural. 
Not one thing here is natural. Whisk off these 
clinging gray washing-gowns, put these girls into 
crinoline and Gothic bonnets, and the innocent 
finery that belongs to them, and send them out 
into the wholesome daylight to talk and laugh and 
make merry, — the birthright of their young years. 
A reHgion that deprives young girls or old girls 
of this boon is not the religion of Jesus Christ. 
Don't tell me ! 



(^ALA-DAYS. 127 

The nuns pass out, and we wander through the 
silent yard, cut off by all the gloom of the medi- 
aeval times from the din, activity, and good cheer of 
the street beyond, and are conducted into the Old 
Men's Department. The floors and furniture are 
faultlessly and fragrantly clean. The kitchen is 
neat and susceptible of warmth and comfort, even 
when the sun's short wooino; is over. The beds 
are ranged along the walls plump and nice ; yet I 
hope that, when I am an old man, I shall not have 
to sleep on blue calico pillow-cases. Here and 
there, within and without, old men are basking in 
the rare sweet warmth of summer, and with their 
canes and their sunshine seem very well bestowed. 
Now I like you. Mother Church. You do better 
by your old men than you do by your young 
women, — simply because you know more about 
them. How can you, Pajoa and Messrs. Cardinals, 
be expected to understand what is good for a girl ? 
If only you would confine yourself to what you 
do comprehend, -^ if only you would apply your 
admirable organizations to legitimate purposes, and 
not run mad on machinery, you would do angels' 
work. 

From the old men's quarters we go uj^-stairs 
where sewing and knitting and all manner of fancy- 
work, especially in beads, are taught to long and 
lank little girls by longer and lanker large girls, 
companioned by a few old women, with common- 
place knitting-work. Everything everywhere is 



128 GALA-DAYS. 

thoroughly neat and comfortable. ; but I have a 
desperate pang of home-sickness ; for if there is one 
condition of life more intolerable than any other, it 
is a state of unvarying, hopeless comfort. 

From the Gray Nunnery to the English Church, 
vv^hich I like much better than the French Cathe- 
dral. There is a general tone of oakiness, solid, 
substantial, sincere, like the England of tradition, — 
set off by a brilliant memorial window and a memo- 
rial altar, and other memorial things which I have 
forgotten, but which I make no doubt the people who 
put them there have not forgotten. Here also we 
find, as all along in Canada, vestiges of His Royal 
Highness, the Prince of Wales. We are shown 
the Bible which he presented to the Church, and 
we gaze with becoming reverence upon the august 
handwriting, — the pew in which he worshipped ; 
and the loyal beadle sees nothing but reverence 
in our momentary occupation of that consecrated 
seat. Evidently there is but a very faint line of 
demarcation in the old man's mind between his 
heavenly and earthly king ; but an old man may 
have a worse weakness than this, — an unreason- 
ing, blind, faithful fondness and reverence for a 
blameless prince. God bless the young man, in 
tliat he is the son of his father and mother. God 
liL'lp him, in that he is to be King of England. 

Chancel and window, altar, and arches and 
aisles and treasures, — is there anything else? Yes, 
the apple that Eve ate, transfixed to oak, — hard to 



GALA-DAYS. 129 

be understood, but seeing is believing. And then 
past Nelson's monument, somewhat battered, like 
the hero whom it commemorates ; past the Champ 
de Mars, a fine parade-ground, hard and smooth 
as a floor ; past the barracks and the reservoir, to 
the new Court-House, massive and plain. Then 
home to dinner and lounging ; then travelling- 
dresses, and the steamer, and a most lovely sunset 
on the river ; and then a night of tranquillity run- 
ning to fog, and a morning approach to the unique 
city of North America, — the first and the only 
walled city /ever saw, or you either, I dare say, 
if you would only be willing to confess it. The 
aspect of the city, as one first approaches it, is 
utterly strange and foreign, — a high promontory 
jutting into the river, with a shelf of squalid, 
crowded, tall and shaky, or low and squatty tene- 
ments at its base, almost standing on the water ; 
and rising behind them, for the back of the shelf, 
a rough, steep precipice abutted with the solid 
masonry of wall and citadel. A board fastened 
somehow about half-way up the rocky cliff, in- 
scribed with the name of Montgomery, marks the 
spot where a hero, a patriot, a gentleman, met his 
death. Disembarkino^, we wind aloncr a stair of a 
road, up steep ascents, and enter in through the 
gates into the city, — the walled, upper city, — 
walls thick, impregnable, gates ponderous, inert, 
burly. You did well enough in your day, old 
foes ; but with Armstrongs and iron-clads, and 

6* I 



130 GALA-DAYS. 

Ericsson still living, where would you be ? — answer 
me that. Quaint, odd, alien old city, — a faint 
phantasmagoria of past conflicts and forgotten 
plans, a dingy fragment of la belle France, a cling- 
ino; reminiscence of EnMand, a dim, stone dream of 
Edinburgh, a little flutter of modern fashion, plant- 
ed upon a sturdy rampart of antiquity, a little cob- 
web of commerce and enterprise, netting over a 
great deal of church and priest and king, with an 
immovable basis of stolid existence, — that is the 
Quebec I inferred from the Quebec I saw. Nothing 
in it was so interesting to me as itself. But passing 
by itself for the nonce, we prudently took advan- 
tao;e of the fine mornins; and drove out to the Falls 
of Montmorency with staring eyes that wanted to 
take in all views, before, behind, on this side 
and that, at once ; and because we could not, the 
joints of my neck at least became so dry with 
incessant action that they almost creaked. Low 
stone cottages lined the road-sides, with windows 
that opened like doors, with an inevitable big black 
stove whenever your eye got far enough in, with a 
pleasant stoop in front, with women perpetually 
washing the floors and the windows, with beautiful 
and brilliant flowers blooming profusely in every 
window, and often trailing and climbing about its 
whole area. Here, I take it, is the home of a real 
peasantry, a contented class, comfortable and look- 
incr for no hio-her lot. These houses seem durable 
and ultimate. The roofs of both houses and piaz- 



GALA-DAYS, 131 

zas are broken, projected, picturesque, and often 
ornamented. They shelter, they protect, they 
brood, they embrace. There are httle trelHses 
and cornices and fanciful adornments. The solid 
homeliness is fringed with elegance. The people 
and the houses do not own each other, but they are 
married. There is love between them, and pride, 
and a hearty understanding. I can think of a 
country where you see little brown or red clap- 
boarded houses that are neither solid nor elegant, 
that are both slight and awkward, — angular and 
shingly and dismal. The roofs are intended just 
to cover the houses, and are scanty at that. The 
sides are straight, the windows inexorable ; and for 
flowers you have a hollyhock or two, and perhaps 
an uncomfortably tall sunflower, sovereign for 
hens. There is no home-look and no home-atmos- 
phere. I love that country better than I like this ; 
but, if you kill me for it, this drive is picturesque. 
These dumpy little smooth, white, flounced and 
flowered cottages look like wicker-gates to a happy 
valley, — born, not built. The cottages of the 
country, in my thoughts, yes, and in my heart, are 
neither born nor built, but " put up," — just for 
convenience, just to lodge in. while waiting for 
something better, or till the com is grown. Com- 
ing man, benefactor of our race, you who shall 
show us how to be contented without being slug- 
gish, — how to be restful, and yet aspiring, — how to 
take the goods the gods provide us, without losing 



132 GALA-DAYS. 

out of manly hearts the sweet sense of providing, 
— how to plant happy feet firmly on the present, 
and not miss from eager eyes the inspiriting out- 
look of the future, — how to make a wife of to-day, 
and not a mistress of to-morrow, — come quickly 
to a world that sorely needs you, and bring a fresh 
evangel. 

The current of our thoughts is broken in upon 
by a new and peculiar institution. Every single 
child, and every group of children on the road, 
leaves its play as we pass by, and all dart upon us 
on both sides of the carriage, almost under the 
wheels, almost under the horses' feet, with out- 
stretched blackened hands, and intense bright 
black eyes, running, panting, shouting, " Un sou! 
2in sou I un sou I " I do not think I am quite in love 
with this as an institution, but it is very lively 
as a spectacle ;. and the little fleet-footed, long- 
winded beo-g-ars show a touchino- confidence in 
human nature. There is no servility in their beg- 
gary ; and when it is glossed over with a thin 
mercantile veneering, by the brown little paws 
holding out to you a gorgeous bouquet of one clo- 
ver-blossom, two dandelions, and a quartette of 
sorrel-leaves, why,' it ceases to be beggarly, and 
becomes traffic overlaid with grace, the acanthus 
capital surmounting the fluted shaft. We meet also 
continual dog-carts, something like the nondescript 
which " blind Carwell " used to drag. Did you 
never see it? Well, then, hke the cart in which 



GALA-DAYS. 133 

the ark went up to Kirjath-jearlm. Now you must 
know. Stubborn two-wheeled veliicles, with the 
whole farm loaded into the body, and the whole 
family on the seat. Here comes one drawn by a 
cow, not unnatural. Unnatural ! It is the key-note 
of the tune. Everything is cow-y, — slow and 
sure, firm, but not fast, kindly, sunny, ruminant, 
heavy, lumbering, basking, content. Calashes also 
we meet, — a cumbrous, old-fashioned " one-hoss 
shay," with a yellow body, a suspicion of spring- 
lessness, wheels with huge spokes and broad rims, 
and the driver sitting on the dash-board. Now we 
are at the Falls of Montmorency. If you would 
know how they look, go and see them. If you 
have seen them, you don't need a description ; and 
if you have not seen them, a description would do 
no goot From the Falls, if you are unsophisti- 
cated, you will resume your carriage and return to 
the city; but if you are an fait, you will cross the 
high-road, cross the pastures, and wind down a 
damp, mossy wood-path to the steps of Montmo- 
rency, — a natural phenomenon, quite as interest- 
ing as, and more remarkable than, the Falls, — 
especially if you go away without seeing it. Any 
river can fall when it comes to a dam. In fact, 
there is nothing for it to do but fall ; but it is not 
every river that can carve out in its rage such 
wonderful stairways as this, — seething and foam- 
ing and roaring and leaping through its narrow 
and narrowing channel, with all the turbulence of 



134 GALA-DAYS. 

its fiery soul unquelled, though the grasp of Time 
is on its throat, silent, mighty, irresistible. 

Montmorency, — Montmorenci, — sweet and 
storied name ! You, too, have received the awful 
baptism. Blood has mingled with your sacrifices. 
The song of your wild waves has been lost in the 
louder thunders of artillery, and the breezes sweep- 
ino; throucrh these o;reen woods have soothed the 
agonies of dying men. Into one heart this ancient 
name, heavy with a weight of disaster and fancied 
disgrace, sank down like lead, — a burden which 
only death could cast off, only victory destroy ; 
and death came hand in hand with victory. 

Driving home, we take more special note of 
what interested us aggressively before, — Lord 
Elgin's residence, — the house occupied by the 
Duke of Kent when a young man in the army 
here, long I suppose before the throne of England 
placed itself at the end of his vista. Did the 
Prince of Wales, I wonder, visit this place, and, 
sending away his retinue, walk slowly alone un- 
der the shadows of these sombre trees, strivino; to 
bring back that far-off past, and some vague out- 
line of the thoughts, the feehngs, the fears and 
fancies of his grandfather, then, like himself, a 
young man, but, not like himself, a fourth son, 
poor and an exile, with no foresight probably of 
the exaltation that awaited his line, — his only 
child to be not only the lady of his land, but our 
lady of the world, — a warm-hearted woman wor- 



GALA-DAYS. 135 

thily seated on the proud throne of Britain, — a 
noble and great-souled woman, in whose sorrow 
nations mourn, for whose happiness nations pray, 
— whose name is never spoken in this far-off 
Western world but with a silent blessing. Another 
low-roofed, many-roomed, rambling old house I 
stand up in the carriage to gaze at lingeringly with 
longing, misty eyes, — the sometime home of Field 
Marshal the Marquis de Montcalm. Writino- now 
of this in the felt darkness that pours up from 
abandoned Fredericksburg, fearing not what the 
Son^h may do in its exultation, but what the North 
may do in its despondency, I understand, as I un- 
derstood not then, nor ever before, what comfort 
came to the dying hero in the certain thought, " I 
shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec." 

Now again we draw near the city whose thou- 
sands of silver (or perhaps tin) roofs dazzle our 
eyes with their resplendence, and I have an indis- 
tinct impression of having been several times 
packed out and in to see sundry churches, of 
which I remember nothing except that I looked in 
vain to see the trophies of captured colors that 
once hung there, commemorating the exploits of 
the ancients, — and on the whole, I don't think I 
care much about churches except on Sundays. 
Somewhere in Canada — perhaps near Lorette — 
is some kind of a church, perhaps the oldest, or the 
first Indian church in Canada, — or may be it was 
interesting because it was burnt down just before 



136 GALA-DAYS. 

we got there. That is the only definite reminis- 
cence I have of any church in Quebec and its 
suburbs, and that is not so definite as it.might be. 
I am sure I inspected the church of St. Roque and 
the church of St. John, because I have entered it 
in my '' Diary " ; but if they v^^ere all set down on 
the table before me at this moment, I am sure I 
could not tell which was which, or that they had 
not been transported each and all from Boston. 

But we ascend the cliff, we enter the citadel, 
we walk upon the Plains of Abraham, and they 
overpower you with the intensity of life. The 
heart beats in labored and painful pulsations with 
the pressure of the crowding past. Yonder shines 
the lovely isle of vines that gladdened the eyes of 
treacherous C artier, the evil requiter of hospitality. 
Yonder from Point Levi the laden ships go gayly 
up the sparkling river, a festive foe. Night drops 
her mantle, and silently the unsuspected squadron 
floats down the stealthy waters, and debarks its 
fateful freight.- Silently in the darkness, the long 
line of armed men writhe up the rugged path. 
The rising sun reveals a startling sight. The im- 
2)ossible has been attained. Now, too late, the 
hurried summons sounds. Too late the deadly 
fire pours in. Too late the thickets flash with 
murderous rifles. Valor is no substitute for vigi- 
lance. Short and sharp the grapple, and victor 
and vanquished alike lie down in the arms of 
all-conquering death. Where this little tree ven- 



GALA-DAYS. 137 

tnres forth its tender leaves, Wolfe felt the bullet 
s|xeednig to his heart. Where this monument 
stands, his soldier-soul fled, all anguish soothed 
away by the exultant shout of victory, — fled from 
passion and pain, from strife and madness, into the 
eternal calm. 

Again and again has this rock under my feet 
echoed to the tramp of marching men. Again 
and again has this green and pleasant plain been 
drenched with blood, this blue, serene sky hung 
with the black pall of death. This broad level of 
pasture-land, high up above the rushing waters of 
the river, but coldly wooed by the faint northern 
sun, and fiercely swept by the wrathful nortliern 
wind, has been the golden bough to many an 
eager seeker. Against these pitiless cliffs full 
many a hope has hurtled, full many a heart has 
broken. Oh the eyes that have looked long- 
ingly hither from far Southern homes ! Oh the 
thouojhts that have vao;uelv wandered over these 
blufts, searching among the shouting hosts, per- 
haps breathlessly among the silent sleepers, for 
household gods ! Oh the cold forms that have 
lain upon these unnoting rocks ! Oh the white 
cheeks that have pressed this springing turf! Oh 
the dead faces mutely upturned to God ! 

Struggle, conflict, agony, — how many of 
earth's Meccas have received their chrism of 
blood ! Thrice and four times liopeless for hu- 
manity, if battle is indeed only murder, violence, 



138 GALA-DAYS. 

Inst of blood, or power, or revenge, — if in that 
wild storm of assault and defence and deathly hurt 
only the fiend and the beast meet incarnate in 
man. But it cannot be. Battle is the Devil's 
work, but God is there. When Montgomery 
cheered his men up their toilsome ascent along 
this scarcely visible path over the rough rocks, and 
the treacherous, rugged ice, was he not upborne 
by an inward power, stronger than brute's, holier 
than fiend's, higher than man's ? When Arnold 
flung himself against this fortress, when he led his 
forlorn hope up to these sullen, deadly walls, 
when, after repulse and loss and bodily suffering 
and weakness, he could still stand stanch against 
the foe and exclaim, " I am in the way of my duty, 
and I know no fear ! " was it not the glorious 
moment of that dishonored life ? Battle is of the 
Devil, but surely God is there. The intoxication 
of excitement, the sordid thirst for fame and power, 
the sordid fear of defeat, may have its place ; but 
there, too, stand high resolve, and stern deter- 
mination, — pure love of country, the immortal 
longing for glory, ideal aspiration, god-like self- 
sacrifice, loyalty to soul, to man, to the Highest. 
The meanest passions of the brute may raven on 
the battle-field, but the sublimest exaltations of 
man have found there fit arena. 

From the moment of our passing into the citadel 
enclosure, a young soldier has accompanied us, — 
whether from caution or courtesy, — and gives us 



GALA-DA YS. 139 

various interesting, and sometimes startling infor- 
mation. He assures us that these guns will fire a 
ball eight miles, — a long range, but not so long as 
his bow, I fear. I perceive several gashes or slits in 
the stone wall of the buildings, and I ask him what 
they are. " Them are for the soldiers' wives hin 
the garrison," he replies promptly. I say nothing, 
but I do not believe they are for the soldiers' 
wives. A soldier's wife could not get through 
them. "How many soldiers in a regiment are 
allowed 16 have wives?" asks Halicarnassus. 
" Heighty, sir," is the ready response. I am a 
little horror-struck, when we leave, to see Hali- 
carnassus hold out his hand as if about to give 
money to this brave and British soldier, and 
scarcely less so to see our soldier receive it quiet- 
ly. But I need not be, for my observation should 
have taught me that small change — fees I believe 
it is called — circulates universally in Canada. 
Out doors and in, it is all one. Everybody takes 
a fee, and is not ashamed. You fee at the falls, 
an(. you fee at the steps. You fee the church, 
and here we have feed the army ; and if we should 
call on the Governor-General, I suppose one 
w^ould drop a coin into his outstretched palm, and 
he would raise his hat and say, " Thank you, sir." 
I do not know whether there is any connection 
between this fact and another which I noticed ; 
but if the observation be superficial, and the con- 
nection imaginary, I shall be no worse off than 



140 GALA-DAYS. 

other voyageurs^ so I will hazard the remark, that 
I saw very few intellectual or elegant looking 
men and women in Quebec, or, for that matter, in 
Canada. Everybody looked peasant-y or shoppy, 
except the soldiers, and they were noticeably 
healthy, hale, robust, well kept ; yet I could not 
help thinking that it is a poor use to put men 
to. These soldiers seem simply well-conditioned 
animals, fat and full-fed ; but not nervous, in- 
tellectual, sensitive, spiritual. However, if the 
people of Canada are not intellectual, they are 
pious. " Great on saints here," says Halicarnassus. 
" They call their streets St. Genevieve, St. Jean, 
and so on ; and when they have run through the 
list, and are hard up, they club them and have a 
Street of All Saints." 

Canada seemed to be a kind of Yalley of Je- 
hoshaphat for Secessionists. We scented the 
aroma somewhat at Saratoga ; nothing to speak 
of, nothing to lay h( M of ; but you were conscious 
of a chill on your warm loyalty. There were 
petty smirks and sneers and quips that you could 
feel, and not see or hear. You sensed^ to use a 
rustic expression, the presence of a class that was 
not palpably treasonable, but rather half cotton. 
But at Canada it comes out all wool. The hot 
South opens like a double rose, red and full. The 
English article is cooler and supercilious. I say 
nothing, for my role is to see ; but Halicarnassus 
and the Anakim exchange views with the greatest 



GALA-DAYS. 141 

nonchalance, in spite of pokes and scowls and 
various subtabiilar hints. 

" What is the news ? " says one to the other, 
who is reading the morning paper. 

" Prospect of English intervention," says the 
other to one. 

" Then we are just in season to see Canada 
for the last time as a British province," says the 
first. 

" And must hurry over to England, if we de- 
sign to see St. George and the dragon tutelizing 
Windsor Castle," says the second ; whereupon a 
John Bull yonder looks up from his 'am and 
heggs, and the very old dragon himself steps 
down from the banner-folds, and glares out of 
those irate eyes, and the ubiquitous British tour- 
ist, I have no doubt, took out his note-book, and 
put on his glasses and wrote down for home con- 
sumption another instance of the insuflPerable as- 
surance of these Yankees. 

" Where have you been ? " I ask Halicarnassus, 
coming in late to breakfast. 

" Only planning the invasion of Canada," says 
he, coolly, as if it were a mere pre-prandial diver- 
sion, — all of which was not only rude, but quite 
gratuitous, since, apart from the fact that we might 
not be able to get Canada, I am sure we don't 
w^ant it. I am disappointed. I suppose I had no 
right to be. Doubtless it was sheer ignorance, 
but I had the idea that it was a great country. 



142 GALA-DAYS. 

ricli in promise if immature in fact, — a nation to 
be added to a nation when the clock should strike 
the hour, — a golden apple to fall into our hands 
when the fulness of time should come. Such in- 
spection as a few days' observation can give, such 
inspection as British tourists find sufficient to settle 
the facts and fate of nations, leads me to infer that 
it is not golden at all, and not much of an apple ; 
and I cannot think what we should want of it, nor 
what we should do with it if we had it. The 
people are radically different from ours. Fancy 
those dark-eyed beggars and those calm-mouthed, 
cowy-men in this eager, self-involved republic. 
They might be annexed to the United States a 
thousand times and never be united, for I do not 
believe any process in the world would turn a 
French peasant into a Yankee farmer. Besides, I 
cannot see that there is anything of Canada except 
a broad strip along the St. Lawrence River. It 
makes a great show on the map, but when you 
ferret.it out, it is nothing but show — and snow 
and ice and woods and barrenness ; and I, for one, 
hope we shall let Canada alone. 

" I think we shall be obliged to leave Quebec 
to-morrow evening," says Halicarnassus, coming 
into the hotel parlor on Saturday evening. 

"Not at all," I exclaim, promptly laying an em- 
bargo on that iniquity. 

" Otherwise we shall be compelled to remain till 
Monday afternoon at four o'clock." 



GALA-DAYS, 143 

" Which we can very contentedly do." 

" But lose a day." 

" Keepmg the Sabbath holy is never losing a 
day," replies his guide, philosopher, and friend, 
sententiously and severely, partly because she 
thinks so, and partly because she is well content 
to remain another day in Quebec. 

" But as we shall not start till five o'clock," he 
lamely pleads, " we can go to church twice like 
saints." 

" And begin at five and travel like sinners." 

"It will only be clipping off the little end of 
Sunday." 

Now that is a principle the beginning of which 
is as when one letteth out water, and I will not 
tolerate it. Short weio-hts are an abomination to 
the Lord. I would rather steal outright than be 
mean. ; (^ highway robber has some claims upon 
respect ; but a petty, pilfering, tricky Christian is 
a damning spot on our civilization.^ Lord Ches- 
terfield asserts that a man's reputation for generos- 
ity does not depend so much on what he spends, 
as on his giving handsomely when it is proper to 
give at all ; and the gay lord builded higher and 
struck deeper than he knew, or at least said. If a 
man thinks the Gospel does not require the Sab- 
bath to be strictly kept, I have nothing to say ; but 
if he pretends to keep it, let him keep the whole 
of it. It takes twenty-four hours to make a day, 
whether it be the first or the last of the week. I 



144 GALA-DAYS. 

utterly reject the idea of setting off a little nucleus 
of Sunday, — just a few hours of sermon, and then 
evaporating into any common day. I want the 
good of Sunday from beginning to end. I want 
nothing but Sunday between Saturday and Mon- 
day. Week-days filtering in spoil the whole. 
What is the use of having a Sabbath-day, a rest- 
day, if Mondays and Tuesdays are to be making 
continual raids upon it ? What good do dinner- 
party Sundays and travelling Sundays and novel- 
reading Sundays do ? You w^ant your Sunday for 
a rest, — a change, — a breakwater. /It is a day 
yielded to the poetry, to the aspirations, to the best 
and highest and holiest part of man.^ I believe 
eminently in this world. I have no kind of faith 
in a system that would push men on to heaven 
without passing through a novitiate on earth. 
What may be for us in the future is but vaguely 
revealed, — just enough to put hope at the bottom 
of our Pandora's box ; but our business is in this 
w^orld. Rio-ht throuorh the thick and thin of this 
world our path lies. Our strength, our worth, 
our happiness, our glory, are to be attained through 
the occupations and advantages of this world. Yet 
though discipline, and not happiness, is the main 
staple here, it is not the only product. Six days 
we must labor and do all work, but the seventh 
is a holiday. Then we may drop the absorbing 
now, and revel in anticipated joys, — lift ourselves 
above the dusty duties, the common pleasures that 



GALA-DAYS. 145 

weary and ensoil, even while they ennoble us, and 
live for a little while in the brio-lit clear atmos- 
phere of another life, — soothed, comforted, stimu- 
lated by the sweetness of celestial harmonies. 

" day most calm, most bright, 
The fruit of this, the next world's bud, 
The indorsement of Supreme delight, 
Writ by a Friend, and with his blood, — 
The couch of time, care's balm and bay, — 
The week were dark but for thy light, 
Thy torch doth show the way." 

He is no fi'iend to man who would abate one jot or 
tittle of our precious legacy. 

Afloat in literature may be found much objurga- 
tion concerning the enforced strictures of the old 
Puritan Sabbath. Perhaps there was a mistake in 
that direction ; but I was brought up on them, and 
they never hurt me any. At least I was never 
conscious of any harm, certainly of no suffering. 
As I look back, I see no awful prisons and chains 
and gloom, but a pleasant jumble of best clothes, — 
I remember now their smell when the drawer was 
•opened, — and Sunday-school lessons, and baked 
beans, and a big red Bible with the tower of Babel 
in it full of little bells, and a walk to church two 
miles through the lane, over the bars, through 
ten-acres, over another pair of bars, through a 
meadow, over another pair of bars, by Lubber Hill, 
over a wall, through another meadow, through the 
woods, over the ridge, by Black Pond, over a 
fence, across a railroad, over another fence, through 



146 GALA-DAYS. 

a pasture, through the long woods, through a gate, 
through the low woods, through another gate, out 
upon the high-road at last. And then there was 
the long; service, durino; which a child could tliink 
her own thoughts, generally ranging no higher 
than the fine bonnets around her, but never tired, 
never willing to stay at home ; and then Sunday 
school, and library-books, and gingerbread, and 
afternoon service, and the long walk home or the 
longer drive^ and catechism in the evening and 
the never-failing Bible. O Puritan Sabbaths ! 
doubtless you were sometimes stormy without and 
stormy within ; but looking back upon you from 
afar, I see no clouds, no snow, but perpetual sun- 
shine and blue sky, and ever eager interest and 
delight, — wild roses blooming under the old stone- 
wall, wild bees humming among the blackberry- 
bushes, tremulous sweet cokimbines skirting the 
vocal woods, wild geraniums startling their shad- 
owy depths ; and I hear now the rustle of dry 
leaves, bravely stirred by childish feet, just as they 
used to rustle in the October afternoons of long 
ago. Sweet Puritan Sabbaths ! breathe upon a 
restless world your calm, still breath, and keep 
us from the evil ! 

Somewhat after this fashion I harangued Hali- 
carnassus, who was shamed into silence, but not 
turned from his purpose ; but the next morning he 
came up from below after breakfast, and informed 
me, with an air mingled of the condescension of the 



_ GALA-DAYS. 147 

monarch and the resignation of the martyr, tliat, as 
I was so scrupolous about travelHng on the Sab- 
bath, he had concluded not to go till Monday after- 
noon. No, I said, I did not wish to assume the 
conduct of affairs. I had given my protest, and 
satisfied my own conscience ; but I was not head 
of the party, and did not choose to assume the 
responsibility of its movements. I did not think 
it right to travel on Sunday, but neither do I think 
it right for one person to compel a whole party to 
change its plans out of deference to his scruples. 
So I insisted that I would not cause detention. 
But Halicarnassus insisted that he would not have 
my conscience forced. Now it would seem nat- 
ural that so tender and profound a regard for my 
scruples would have moved me to a tender and 
profound gratitude ; but nobody understands Hal- 
icarnassus except myself. He is a dark lane, full 
of crooks and turns, — a labyrinth which nobody 
can thread without the clew. That clew I hold. 
I know him. I can walk right through him in 
the darkest night without any lantern. He is 
fully aware of it. He knows that it is utterly 
futile for him to attempt to deceive me, and yet, 
with the infatuation of a lunatic, he is continually 
producing his flimsy little fictions for me as con- 
tinually to blow away. For instance, when we 
were walking down the path to the steps of Mont- 
morency, Grande called out in delight at some 
new and beautiful white flowers beside the path. 
What Mere they ? I did not know. What are 



148 GALA-DAYS. 

they, Halicarnassus ? " Ah ! wax-flowers," says 
he, coming up, and Grande passed on content, as 
would ninety-nine out of a hundred ; but an in- 
describable somethincr in his air convinced me that 

o 

he was not drawing on his botany for his facts. I 
determined to get at the root of the matter. 

" Do you mean," I asked, " that the name of 
those flowers is wax-flowers ? " 

" Of course," he replied. " Why not ? " 

" Do you mean," I persisted, confirmed in my 
suspicions by his remarkable question, " that you 
know that they are wax-flowers, or that you do not 
know that they are not wax-flowers ? " 

" Why, look at 'em for yourself. Can't you see 
w4th your own eyes ? " he ejaculated, attempting 
to walk on. 

I planted myself full in front of him. " Hali- 
carnassus, one step further except over my lifeless 
body you do not go, until you tell me whether 
those are or are not wax-flowers ? " 

" Well," he said, brought to bay at last, and 
sheepishly enough whisking ofl" the heads of a 
dozen or two with his cane, " if they are not that, 
they are something else." There ! 

So when he showed his delicate consideration 
for my conscience, I was not grateful, but watch- 
ful. I detected under the glitter something that 
was not gold. I made very indiff'erent and guard- 
ed acknowledgments, and silently detached a corps 
of observation. In five minutes it came out that 
no train left Quebec on Sunday ! 



V 




O we remained over Sunday in Quebec, 
and in the morning attended service at 
the French Catliedral ; and as we all 
had the American accomplishments of 
the " Nonne, a Prioresse," who spoke French 

" ful fayre and fetisly 
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, 
The Frenche of Paris w^ to hire unknowe," 

it may be inferred that we were greatly edified by 
the service. From the French, as one cannot 
have too much of a good thing, we proceeded 
without pause to the English Cathedral, — cathe- 
dral by courtesy? — and heard a sermon by a 
Connecticut bishop, which, however good, was a 
disappointment, because we wanted the flavor of 
the soil. And after dinner we walked on the high 
and sightly Durham terrace, and then went to the 
Scotch church, joined in Scotch singing, and heard 
a broad Scotch sermon. So we tried to worship 
as well as we could ; but it is impossible not to be 
sio;ht-seeino; where there are sights to see, and for 



150 GALA-DAYS. 

that matter I don't suppose there is any harm in 
it. You don't go to a show ; but if the church and 
the people and the minister are all a show, what 
can you do about it? 

As I sat listenino; in the French Cathedral to a 
service I but a quarter comprehended, the residual 
three fourths of me went wandering at its own 
sweet will, and queried why it is that a battle- 
ground should so stir the blood, while a church 
suffers one to j^ass calmly and coldly out through 
its portals. I do not believe it is total depravity ; 
for though the church stands for what is good, the 
battle-field does not stand for all that is bad. The 
church does indeed represent man's highest aspira- 
tions, his longings for holiness and heaven. But 
the battle-field speaks not, I think, of retrogression. 
It is in the same line as the church. It stands in 
the upward path. The church and its influences 
are the dew and sunshine and spring rains that 
nourish a gentle, wholesome growth. Battle is the 
mighty convulsion that marks a geologic era. The* 
fierce throes of battle upheave a continent. The 
church clothes it with soft alluvium, adorns it with 
velvet verdure, enriches it with fruits and grains, 
glorifies it with the baauty of blooms. In the 
struggle all seems to be chaos and destruction ; but 
after each shock the elevation is greater. Perhaps 
it is that always the concussion of the shock im- 
presses, while the soft, slow, silent constancy accus- 
toms us and is unheeded ; but I think there is 



GALA-DAYS. 151 

another cause. In any church you are not sure 
of sincerity, of earnestness. / Church building and 
church oro;anization are the outgrowth of man's 
wants, and mark his upward path ; but you do not 
know of a certainty whether this individual edi- 
fice represents life, or vanity, ostentation, custom, 
thrift. You look around upon the worshippers in 
a church, and you are not usually thrilled. You 
do not see the presence and prevalence of an 
absorbing, exclusive idea. Devotion does not fix 
them. They are diffusive, observant, often appar- 
ently indifferent, sometimes positively exhibitive. 
They adjust their draperies, whisper to their 
neighbors, look vacant about the mouth. The 
beat of a drum or the bleat of a calf outside 
disturbs and distracts them. An untimely comer 
dissipates' their attention. They are floating, loose, 
incoherent, at the mercy of trifles. The most 
inward, vital part of religion does not often show 
itself in church, though it be nursed and nurtured 
there. So when we go into an empty church, it 
is — empty. Hopes, fears, purposes, ambitions, the 
eager hours of men, do not pervade and penetrate 
those courts. The walls do not flame with the 
fire of burning hearts. The white intensity of life 
may never have glowed within them. No fragrance 
of intimate, elemental passion lingers still. No fine 
aroma of being clings through the years and suf- 
fuses you with its impalpable sweetness, its subtile 
strengJi. You are not awed, because the Awful 



152 GALA-DAYS. 

is not there. But on the battle-field you have no 
doubt. Imao-ination roams at will, bisit in the 
domains of faith. Realities have been there, and 
their ghosts walk up and down forever. There 
men met men in deadly earnest. Right or wrong, 
they stood face to face with the unseen, the inevi- 
table. The great problem awaited them, and they 
bent fiery souls to its solution. But one idea 
moved them all and wholly. They threw them- 
selves body and soul into the raging furnace. All 
minor distractions were burned out. Every self 
was fused and lost in one single molten flood, 
dashing madly against its barrier to whelm in 
rapturous victory or be broken in sore defeat. 

And it is earnestness that utilizes the good. It 
is sincerity that makes the bad not infernal. 

Monday gave us the Indian village, — more In- 
dian-y than village-y, — and the Falls of Lorette. 
For a description, see the Falls of Montmorency. 
Lorette is more beautiful, I think, more wild, more 
varied, more sympathetic, — not so precipitous, 
not so concentrated, not so forceful, but ^more 
picturesque, poetic, sylvan, lovely. The descent 
is long, broad, and broken. The waters flash 
and foam over the black rocks' like a white lace 
veil over an Ethiop belle, and then rush on to other 
woodland scenes. 

We left Quebec ignobly, crossing the river in a 
steamer to which the eminently English adjective 
nasti/ can fitly apply, — a wheezy, sputtering, 



GALA-DAYS. 153 

black, crazy old craft, muddy enough throughout 
to have been at the bottom of the river and sucked 
up again half a dozen times. With care of the 
luggage, shawls, hackmen, and tickets, we all con- 
trived to become separated, and I found myself 
crashed into one corner of a little Black Hole of 
Calcutta, with no chair to sit in, no space to stand 
in, and no air to breathe, on the sultriest day that 
Canada had known for years. What windows 
there were opened by swinging inwards and up- 
wards, which they could not do for the press, and 
after you had got them up, there was no way to 
keep them there except to stand and hold them 
at arm's length. So we waddled across the river. 
Now we have all read of shipwrecks, and the 
moral grandeur of resignation and calmness which 
they have developed. We have read of drowning, 
and the gorgeous intoxication of the process. But 
there is neither grandeur nor gorgeousness in 
drowning in a tub., If you must sink, you at least 
would like to go down gracefully, in a stately ship, 
in mid-ocean, in a storm and uproar, bravely, 
decorously, subUmely, as the soldiers in Ravens- 
hoe, drawn up in line, with their officers at their 
head, waving to each other calm farewells. I defy 
anybody to be graceful or heroic in plumping 
down to the bottom of a city river amid a jam of 
heated, hurried, panting, angry passengers, moun- 
tains of trunks, carpet-bags, and indescribable 
plunder, and countless stratifications of coagulated, 
7* 



154 GALA-DA YS. 

glutinous, or* pulverized mud. To the credit of 
human nature it must be said, that the sufferers 
kept the peace with each other, though vigorously 
denounclno; the unknown author of all their woes. 
After an age of suffocation and fusion, there came 
a stir which was a relief because it was a stir. 
Nobody seemed to know cause or consequence, 
but everybody moved ; so I moved, and bobbing, 
fumbling, groping through Egyptian darkness, 
stumbling over the beams, crawling under the 
boilers, creeping through the steam-pipes, scalping 
ourselves against the funnels, we finally came out 
gasping into the blessed daylight. " Here you 
are ! " exclaimed cheerily the voice of Halicarnas- 
sus, as I went winking and blinking in the unac- 
customed light. " I began to think I had lost my 
cane," — he had given it to m^ when he went to 
look up the trunks. " Why ? " I asked faintly, 
not yet fully recovered from my long incarceration. 
" It is so long since I saw you, that I thought you 
must have fallen overboard," was his gratifying 
reply. I was still weak, but I gathered up my 
remaining strength and plunged the head of the 
cane, a dog's head it was, into his heart. His 
watch, or his Bible, or something interposed, and 
rescued him from the fate he merited ; and then 
we rode over the miserable, rickety farther end 
of the Grand Trunk Railway, and reached Island 
Pond at midnight, — in time to see the mao-nlfi- 
cent Northern Lights flashing, flickering, wavering, 



GALA-DAYS. ' 155 

streaming, and darting over the summer sky ; and 
as the people in the Pond were many and the 
rooms few, we had plenty of time to enjoy the 
sight. It was exciting, fascinating, almost bewil- 
dering ; and feeling the mystic mood, I proposed to 
write a poem on it, to which Halicarnassus said he 
had not the smallest objection, provided he should 
not be held liable to read it, adding, as he offered 
me his pencil, that it» was just the tiling, — he 
wanted some narcotic to counteract the stimulus 
of the fresh cold air after the long and heated ride, 
or he should get no sleep for the night. 

I do not believe there is in our beautiful but 
distracted country a single person who is the sub- 
ject of so cold-blooded, unprovoked, systematic, 
mahgnant neglect and abuse on any one point as 
the writer of these short and simple annals on this. 
If there is one thincr in the whole rano;e of human 
possibilities on which I pride myself, it is my 
poetry. I cannot do much at prose. That re- 
quires a depth, an equilibrium, a comprehension, a 
sagacity, a culture, which I do not possess and 
cannot command. Nor in the domestic drudgery 
line, nor the parlor ornament line, nor the social 
philanthropic line, nor the ministering angel line, 
can I be said to have a determinate value. As an 
investment, as an economic institution, as an avail- 
able force, I suppose I must be reckoned a failure ; 
but I do write lovely poetry. That I insist on: 
and yet, incredible as it may seem, of that one 



156 ■ GALA-DAYS. 

little ewe lamb have I been repeatedly and re- 
morselessly robbed by an unscnipulous public, and 
a still more unscrupulous private. Whenever I 
come into the room with a sheet of manuscript in 
my hand, HaHcarnassus glances at it, and if the 
lines are not all of the same length, he finds at 
once that he has to go and shovel a path, or bank 
up the cellar, or get in the wood, unless I have 
taken the precaution to lock the door and put the 
key in my pocket. When, by force or fraud, I 
have compelled a reluctant audience, he is sure to 
strike in by the time I have got to the second 
stanza, breaking right into the middle of a figure 
or a rapture, and asking how much more there is 
of it. I know of few things better calculated to 
extinguish the poetic fire than this. I regret to be 
obliged to say that Halicarnassus, by his persist- 
ent hostility, — I believe I may say, persecu- 
tion, — has disseminated his plebeian prejudices 
over a very large portion of our joint community, 
and my muse consequently is held in the smallest 
esteem. Not but that whenever there is a church 
to be dedicated, or a centennial to be celebrated, 
or a picnic to be sung, or a fair to be closed, I am 
called on to furnish the poetry, which, with that 
sweetness of disposition which forms a rare but 
fitting background to poetic genius, I invariably 
do, to be praised and thanked for a week, and 
th(Mi to be again as before told, upon the slightest 
provocation, '^ You better not meddle with verses." 



GALA-DAYS. 157 

" You stick to prose." " Verses are not your 

forte." " You can't begin to come up with , 

and , and ." 

On that auroral night, crowned with the splen- 
dors of the wild mystery of the North, I am sure 
that the muse awoke and stirred in the depths of 
my soul, and needed but a word of recognition and 
encouragement to put on her garland and singing 
robes, and pour forth a strain which the world 
would not have willingly let die, and which I 
would have transferred to these pages. But that 
word was not spoken. Scorn and sarcasm usurped 
the throne of gentle cherishing, and the golden 
moment passed away forever. It is as well. Per- 
haps it is better ; for on second thought, I recollect 
that the absurd prejudice I have mentioned has 
extended itself to the editor of this Magazine,* who 
jerks me down with a pitiless pull whenever I 
would soar into the empyrean, — ruling out with 
a rod of iron every shred of poetry from my pages, 
till I am reduced to the necessity of smuggling it 
in by writing it in the same form as the rest ; 
when, as he tells poetry only by the capitals and 
exclamation-points, he thinks it is prose, and lets 
it go. 

Here, if I may be allowed, I should like to make 
a digression. In an early stage of my journeying, 
I spoke of the pleasure I had taken in reading 
" The Betrothal " and '' The Espousals." I can- 

* The Atlantic Monthly. 



158 GALA-DAYS. 

not suppose that it is of any consequence to the 
world whether I think well or ill of a poem, but 
the only way in which the w^orld will ever come 
out right is by every one's putting himself right ; 
and I don't wish even my influence to seem to 
be thrown in favor of so objectionable a book as 
" Faithful Forever," a continuation of the former 
poems by the same author. Coventry Patmore's 
books generally are made up of poetry and prattle, 
but the poetry makes you forgive the prattle. The 
tender, strong, wholesome truths they contain 
steady the frail bark through dangerous waters ; 
but " Faithful Forever " is wTong, false, and per- 
nicious, root and branch, and a thorough misno- 
mer besides. Frederic loves Honoria, who loves 
and marries Arthur, leaving Frederic out in the 
cold ; whereupon Frederic turns round and mar- 
ries Jane, knowing all the while that he does not 
love her and does love Honoria. What kind of a 
Faithful Forever is this ? A man cannot love two 
women simultaneously, whatever he may do con- 
secutively. If he ceases to love the first, he is 
surely not faithful forever. If he does not cease to 
love her, he is false forever to the second, — and 
worse than false. Marrying from pique or indif- 
ference or disappointment is one of the greatest 
crimes that can be committed, as well as one of the 
greatest blunders that can be made. The man 
who can do such a thing is a liar and a perjurer. 
I can understand that people should give up the 



GALA-DA YS. 159 

people tliey love, but there is no possible shadow 
of excuse for their taking people whom they don't 
love. It 19 no matter how inferior Jane may be to 
Frederic. / A woman can feel a'good many things 
that she cannot analyze or understand, and there 
never yet was a woman so stupid that she did not 
know whether or not her husband loved her, and 
was not either stricken or savage to find that he 
did not. No woman ever was born with a heart 
so small that anything less than the whole of her 
husband's heart could fill it. 

Moreover, apart from unhappy consequences, 
there is a rio;ht and a wronoj about it. How dare 
a man stand up solemnly before God and his fel- 
lows with a lie in his right hand ? and if he does 
do it, how dare a poet or a novelist step up and 
glorify him in it ? The man who commits a crime 
does not do so much mischief as the man who 
turns the criminal into a hero. Frederic Graham 
did a weak, wicked, mean, and cowardly deed, not 
being in his general nature weak, wicked, mean, 
or cowardly, and was allowed to blunder on to a 
tolerable sort of something like happiness in the 
end. No one has a right to complain, for all of us 
get a great deal more and better than we deserve. 
We have no right to complain of Providence, but 
we have a right to complain of the poet who comes 
up and says not a word in reprobation of the mean- 
ness and cowardice, not a word of the cruelty in- 
flicted upon Jane, nor the wrong done to his own 



160 GALA-DAYS. 

soul ; but veils the wickedness, excites our sympa- 
thy and pity, and in fiict makes Frederic out to be 
a sort of subHme and suffering martyr. He was 
no martyr at all. Nobody is a martyr, if he cannot 
help himself. If Frederic had the least spirit of 
martyrdom, he would have breasted his sorrow^ 
manfully and alone. Instead of which, he shuffled 
himself and his misery upon poor simple Jane, get- 
tin cr all the solace he could from her, and leading 
her a wretched, almost hopeless life for years. 
This is what we are to admire ! This is the 
knight without reproach ! Tliis is to be Faithful 
Forever ! I suppose Coventry Patmore thinks Fred- 
eric is to be commended because he did not break 
into Honoria's house and run away with her. 
That is the only thing he could have done worse 
than he did do, and that I have no doubt he 
would have done if he could. I have no faith 
in the honor or the virtue of men or women who 
wdll marry where they do not love. I think it is 
just as sijiftil — and a thousand times as vile — 
to marry unlovingly, as to love unlawfully.* 

There is this about mountains, — you cannot get 
away from them. Low country may be beautifal, 
yet you may be preoccupied and pass through it 
or bv it without consciousness ; but the mountains 

* Some one just here suggests that it was Jane who was faithful 
forever, not Frederic. That indeed makes the title appropriate, but 
does not relieve the atrocity of the plot. 



GALA-DAYS. 161 

rise, and there is no escape. Representatives of an 
unseen force, voices from an infinite past, benefac- 
tors of the valleys, themselves unblest, almoners of 
a charity which leaves them in the heights indeed, 
but the heights of eternal desolation, raised aboA^e 
all sympathies, all tenderness, shining but repel- 
lent, grand and cold, mighty and motionless, — we 
stand before them hushed. They fix us with their 
immutability. They shroud us with their Egyp- 
tian gloom. They sadden. They awe. They 
overpower. Yet far off how different is the im- 
pression ! Bright and beautiful, evanescent yet 
unchanging, lovely as a spirit with their clear, soft 
outlines and misty resplendence ! Exquisitely says 
Winthrop : " There is nothing so refined as the 
outline of a distant mountain ; even a rose-leaf is 
stiff-edged and harsh in comparison. Nothing else 
has that definite indefiniteness, that melting per- 
manence, that evanescing changelessness. [I did 
not know that I was using his terms.] Clouds in 
vain strive to imitate it ; they are made of slighter 
stuff; they can be blunt or ragged, but they 
cannot have that sohd positiveness. Even in its 
cloudy, distant fairness, there is a concise, emphatic 
reality altogether uncloudlike." 

Seeing them from afar, lovely rather than terri- 
ble, we feel that though between the mountain and 
its valley, with much friendly service and continual 
intercourse, there can be no real communion, still 
the mountain is not utterly lonely, but has yonder 



162 GALA-DAYS. 

in the east its solace, and in the north a compan- 
ion, and over toward the west its coterie. SoH- 
tary but to the lowly-hving, in its own sphere 
there is immortal companionship, and this vast hall 
of the heavens, and many a draught of nectar 
borne by young Ganymede. 

The Alpine House seems to be the natural 
caravansary for Grand Trunk travellers, being 
accessible from the station without the intervention 
of so much as an omnibus, and being also within 
easy reach of many objects of interest. Here, 
therefore, we lay over awhile to strike out across 
the mountains and into the valleys, and to gather 
health and serenity for the weeks that were to 
come, with their urgent claims for all of both that 
could be commanded. 

Eastern Massachusetts is a very pretty place to 
live in, and the mutual admiration society is uni- 
versally agreed by its members to be the very best 
society on this continent. Nevertheless, by too long 
and close adherence to that quarter of the globe, 
one comes to forget how the world was made, and, 
in fact, that it ever was made. We silently take 
it for granted. It was always there. Smooth, smil- 
ing plains, gentle hills, verdurous slopes, blue, calm 
streams, and softly wooded banks, — a courteous, 
well-bred earth it is, and we forget that it has not 
been so from the beginning. But here among the 
mountains. Genesis finds exegesis. We stand 
amid the primeval convulsions of matter, — the 



GALA-DAYS. 163 

first fierce throes of life. Marks of the struggle 
still linger ; nay, the struggle itself is not soothed 
quite away. No more unexceptionable surfaces, 
but yawns and fissures, chasms and precipices, 
deep gashes in the hills, hills bursting up from 
the plains, rocks torn from their granite beds 
and tossed hither and thither in some grand storm 
of. Titan wrath, rivers with no equal majesty, 
but narrow, deep, elfish, rising and falling in wild 
cajn-ice, playhig mad pranks with their uncertain 
shores, treacherous, reckless, obstreperous. Here 
we see the changes actually going on. The earth 
is still a-making. More than one river, scorning 
its channel, has, within the memory of man, hewn 
out for itself another, and taken undisputed, if 
not undisturbed possession. The Peabody River, 
which rolls modestly enough now, seeming, in- 
deed, a mere thread of brook dancing through a 
rocky bed by far too lai'ge for it, will by and by, 
when the rains come, rise and roar and rush with 
such impetuosity that these great water-worn 
stones, now bleaching quietly in the sun, shall 
be wrenched up from their resting-places, and 
whirled down the river with such fury and up- 
roar that the noise of their crashing and rolling 
shall break in upon your dreams at night. Wild 
River, a little farther down, you may ford almost 
dry-shod, and in four hours it shall reach such 
heights and depths as might upbear our mightiest 
man-of-war. Many and many a gully, half choked 



164 GALA-DAYS. 

with stones and briers, lurks under the base of an 
overtopping hill, and shows where a forgotten Un- 
dine lived and loved. The hills still bear the scars 
of their wounds. No soft-springing greenness 
veils the tortuous processes. Uncompromising and 
terrible, .the marks of their awful rending, the 
agony of their fiery birth, still remain. Time, tjie 
destroyer of man's works, is the perfecter of God's. 
These ravages are not Time's ; they are the doings 
of an early force, beneficent, but dreadful. It is 
Time's to soothe and adorn. 

We connect the idea of fixity with the moun- 
tains, but they seem to me to be continually pirou- 
etting with each other, — exchanging or entirely 
losing their identity. You are in the Alpine Val- 
ley. Around you stand Mount Hayes, so named in 
honor of a worthy housekeeper ; the Imp, sobri- 
quet of a winsome and roguish little girl, who once 
made the house gay ; the Pilot range, — because 
they pilot the Androscoggin down to the sea, says 
one to whom I never appeal in vain for facts or 
reasons ; Mount Madison, liftino; his shining head 
beyond an opening niched for him in the woods of 
a high hill-top by Mr. Hamilton Willis of Boston, 
whom let all men thank. I thanked him in my 
heart every morning, noon, and night, looking up 
from my seat at table to that distant peak, where 
otherwise I should have seen only a monotonous 
forest line. Over ao-ainst the sunset is Mount Mo- 
riah, and Carter, and Surprise. You know them 



GALA-DAYS. 165 

well. You can call them all by name. But you 
have no sooner turned a corner than — where are 
they? Gone, — all changed. Every Hue is altered, 
every contour new. Spurs have become knobs. 
Peaks are ridges ; summits, terraces. Madison 
probably has disappeared, and some Adams or 
Jefferson rises before you in unabashed grandeur. 
Carter and the Imp have hopped around to another 
point of the compass. All the lesser landmarks, 
as the old song says, 

" First upon the heel-tap, then upon the toe, 
Wheel about, and turn about, and do just so." 

Your topography is entirely dislocated. You must 
begin your acquaintance anew. Fresh lines and 
curves, new forms and faces and chameleon tints, 
thrust you off from the secrets of the Storm-Kings. 
While you fancy yourself to be battering down the 
-citadel, you are but knocking feebly at the out- 
works. You have caught a single phase, and their 
name is legion. Infinite as light, infinite as form, 
infinite as motion, so infinite are the mountains. 
Purple and intense against the glowing sunset sky, 
the Pilot range curves its strong outlines, or shim- 
mers steely-blue in the noonday haze. Day unto 
day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth 
knowledge of their ever-vanishing' and ever-re- 
turning splendors. New every morning, fresh 
every evening, we fancy each pageant fairer and 
finer than the last. Every summer hour, a mes- 



166 GALA-DAYS. 

senger from heaven, is charged with the waiting 
landscape, and drapes it with its own garment of 
woven hght, celestial broidery. Sunshine crowns 
the crests, and stamps their kinship to the skies. 
Shadows nestle in the dells, flit over the ridges, 
hide mider the overhanging, cliffs, to be chased, out 
in gleeful frolic by the slant sunbeams of the mel- 
low afternoon. Clouds and vapors and unseen 
hands of heaven flood the hills with beauty. They 
have drunk in the warmth and life of the sun, 
they quiver beneath his burning glance, they lie 
steeped in color, gorgeous, tremulous, passionate ; 
rosy red dropping away into pale gold, emeralds 
dim and sullen where they ripple down towards 
the darkness, dusky browns and broad reaches of 
blue-black massiveness, till the silent starlight 
wraps the scene with blessing, and the earth sit- 
teth still and at rest. 

On such an evening, never to be forgotten, we 
stood alone with the night. Day had gone softly, 
evening came slowly. There was no speech nor 
language, only hope and passion and purpose died 
gently out. Individualities were not, and we stood 
at one with the universe, hand in hand with the 
immortals, silent, listening. It was as if the 
heavens should give up their secret, and smite us 
with the music of the spheres. Suddenly, un- 
heralded, up over the summit of Mount Moriah 
came the full moon, a silver disc, a lucent, steady 
orb, globular and grand, filling the valleys with 



GALA-DAYS. 167 

light, touching all things into a hushed and dark- 
ling splendor. To us, standing alone, far from 
sight of human face or sound of human voice, it 
seemed the censer of God, swung out to receive 
the incense of the world. 

Multifold mists join hands with the light to play 
fantastic tricks upon these mighty monarchs. The 
closing day is tender, bringing sacrifice and obla- 
tion ; but the day of flitting clouds and frequent 
showers riots in changing joys. Every subordinate 
eminence that has arrogated to itself the sublimity 
of the distant mountain, against whose rocky sides 
it lay lost, is unmasked by the vapors that gather 
behind it and reveal its low-lying outlines. Every 
little dimple of the hills has its chalice of mountain 
wine. The mist stretches above the ridge, a long, 
low, level causeway, solid as the mountains them- 
selves, which buttress its farther side, a via trium- 
pha, meet highway for the returning chariot of an 
emperor. It rears itself from the valleys, a dragon 
rampant and with horrid jaws. It flings itself 
with smothering caresses about the burly moun- 
tains, and stifles them in its close embrace. It 
trails along the hills, floating in filmy, parting 
gauze, scattering little flecks of pearl, fringing 
itself over the hollows, and hustlino; against a 
rocky breastwork that bars its onward going. It 
wreathes upward, curling around the peaks and 
veiling summits, whose slopes shine white in the 
unclouded sun. It shuts down gray, dense, som- 



168 GALA-DA YS. 

bre, with moody monotone. It opens roguishly 
one httle loop-hole, through which — cloud above, 
cloud below, cloud on this side and on that — you 
see a sweet, violet-hued mountain-dome,- lying 
against a background of brilliant blue sky, — just 
for one heart-beat, and it closes again, gray, 
sheeted, monotonous. 

Leaving the valley, and driving along the Jeffer- 
son road, you have the mountains under an entirely 
new aspect. Before, they stood, as it were, end- 
wise. Now you have them at broadside. Mile 
after mile you pass under their solid ramparts, but 
far enouo;h to receive the idea of their heicrht 
and breadth, their vast material greatness, • — far 
enouo-h to let the broad o-reen levels of the 

CI o 

intervale slide between, with here and there a 
graceful elm, towering and protective, and here 
and there a brown farm-house. But man's works 
show puny and mean beside nature, which seems 
spontaneous as a thought. Man's work is a toil ; 
nature's is a relief. Man labors to attain abun- 
dance ; nature, to throw off superabundance. The 
mountain-sides bristle with forests ; man drags him- 
self from his valley, and slowly and painfully 
levels an inch or two for his use ; just a little way 
here and there a green field has crept up into the 
forest. The mountain-chin has one or two shaven 
spots ; but for the greater part his beard is still un- 
shorn. All alono; he sends down his boon to men. 
Everywhere you hear the scurrying feet of little 



GALA-DAYS. 169 

brooks, tumbling pell-mell down the rocks in tlieir 
frantic haste to reach a goal ; — often a pleasant 
cottao:e-door, to lio-hten the burden and cool the 
brow of toil ; often to pour through a hollow log 
by the wayside, — a never-failing beneficence and 
joy to the wearied, trusty horses. From the piazza 
»^f the Waumbeck House — a quiet, pleasant, 
home-like little hotel in Jefferson, and the only 
one, so far as I know, that has had the grace to 
take to itself one of the old Indian names in 
which the region abounds, Waumbeck, Waumbek- 
Methna, Mountains of Snowy-Foreheads — a very 
panorama of magnificence unfolds itself. The 
whole horizon is rimmed with mountain-ranges. 
The White Mountain chain stands out bold and 
firm, sending greeting to his peers afar. Fran- 
conia answers clear and bright fi*om the south- 
west ; and from beyond the Connecticut the Green 
hills make response. Loth to leave, we turn away 
from these grand out-lying bulwarks to front on 
our return bulwarks as grand and massive, behind 
whose impregnable walls we seem shut in from the 
world forever. 

A little lyric in the epos may be found in a side- 
journey to Bethel, — a village which no one ever 
heard of, at least I never did, till now ; but when 
we did hear, we heard so much and so well that 
we at once started on a tour of exploration, and 
found — as Halicarnassus quotes the Queen of 
Sheba — there was more of it than we expected. 

8 



170 GALA-DAYS. 

The ride down in the train, if you are willing and 
able to stand on the rear platform of the rear car, 
is of surpassing beauty. The mountains seem to 
rise and approach in dumb, reluctant farewell.* 
The river bends and insinuates, spreading out to 
you all its islands of delight. Molten in its depths, 
golden in its shallows, it meanders through its 
meadows, a joy forever. Bethel sits on its banks, 
loveliest of rural villages, and gently unfolds its 
beauties to your longing eyes. The Bethel House, 

— a large, old-fashioned country-house, with one 
of those broad, social second-story piazzas, and a 
well bubbling up in the middle of the dining-room, 

— think of that, Master Brooke ! — a hotel whose 
landlord welcomes you with lemonade and roses 
(perhaps he would n't 9/ou /), — a hotel terrible to 
evil-doers, but a praise to them that do well, inas- 
much as it is conducted on the millennial principle 
of quietly frightening away disagreeable people 
with high rates, and fascinating amiable people 
with reasonable ones, so that, of course, you have 
the wheat without the chaff, — a hotel where 
people go to rest and enjoy, and wear morning- 
dresses all day, and are fine only when they 
choose — indeed, you can do that anywhere, if 
you only think so. The idea that you must lug 
all your best clothes through the wilderness is 
absurd. A good travelling-dress, admissible of 
bisection, a muslin spencer for warm evenings, 
and a velvet bodice when you design to be gor- 



GALA -DAYS, 171 

geous, will take you through with all the honors 
of war. , Besides, there are always sure to be 
plenty of people in every drawing-room who will 
be sumptuously attired, and you can feast your 
eyes luxuriously on them, and gratefully feel that 
the work is so well done as to need no co-operation 
of yours, and that you can be comfortable with an 
easy conscience. ' Where was I ? O, on the top of 
Paradise Hill, I believe, surveying Paradise, a 
little indistinct and quavering in the sheen of a 
s'Limmer noon, but clear enough to reveal its Pison, 
its Gihon, its Hiddekel and Euphrates, compassing 
the whole land of Havilah ; or perhaps I was on 
j parrowhawk, beholding Paradise from another 
'point, dotted with homes and church-spires, rich 
and fer^^'le, fair still, with compassing river and 
t/anquil lake ; or, more probable than either, I 
/ as driving along the highland that skirts the 
/^olden meadows through which the river purls, 
ruddy in the setting sun, and rejoicing in the 
beauty amid which he lives and moves and has his 
being. Lovely Bethel, fairest ornament of the 
sturdy mountain-land, tender and smiling as if no 
storm had ever swept, no sin ever marred, — an 
Arcadia that no one would ever leave but for the 
magic of the drive back to Gorham through piny 
woods, under frowning mountains, circled with all 
the glories of sky and river, — a drive so enticing, 
that, when you reach Gorham, straight back again 
you will go to Bethel, and so forever oscillate, un* 
less some stronger magnet interpose. 



172 GALA-DAYS. 

A rainy day among the mountains Is generally 
considered rather dismal, but I find that I like It. 
Apart from the fact that you wish, or ought to 
wish, to see Nature In all her aspects, it is a very 
beneficent arrangement of Providence, that, when 
eyes and brain and heart are weary with looking 
and receiving, an Impenetrable barrier Is noise- 
lessly let down, and you are forced to rest. 
Besides, there are many things which it Is not 
absolutely essential to see, but which, nevertheless, 
are very interesting in the sight. You would not 
think of turning away from a mountain or a 
waterfall to visit them, but when you are forcibly 
shut out from both, you condescend to homelier 
sights. For Instance, I wonder how many fre- 
quenters of the Alpine House ever saw or know 
that there is a dsLiry in its Plutonian regions. A 
rainy day discovered it to us, and, with many an 
injunction touching possible dust, we were bidden 
into those mysterious precincts. A carpet, laid 
loose over the steps, forestalled every atom of 
defilement, and, descending cautiously and fearfully 
through portals and outer courts, we trod presently 
the adytum. It was a dark, cool, silent place. 
The floors were white, spotless, and actually fra- 
grant with cleanliness. The sides of the room 
were lined with shelves, the shelves begemmed 
with bright pans, and the bright pans filled with 
milk, — I don't know how many pans there were, 
but I should think about a million, — and there was 



GALA-DAYS. 173 

a mound of pails piled up to be washed, and cosey 
little colonies of butter, pleasant to eyes, nose, and 
mouth, and a curious machine to work butter over, 
consisting of something like a table in the shape of 
the letter V, the flat part a trough, with a wooden 
handle to push back and forth, and the buttermilk 
running out at the apex of the V. If the princi- 
ple on which it is constructed is a secret, I don't 
believe I have divulged it ; but I do not aim to let 
you know precisely what it is, only that there is 
such a thing. I hope now that every one will not 
flock down cellar the moment he alights from the 
Gorham train. I should be very sorry to divert 
the stream of travel into Mr. Hitchcock's dairy, 
for I am sure any great influx of visitors would 
/orely disconcert the good genius who presides 
there, and would be an ill requital for her kindness 
to us ; but it was so novel and pleasant a sight that 
I am sure she will pardon me for speaking of it 
just this once. 

Another mild entertainment during an intermit- 
tent rain is a run of about a mile up to the " hen- 
nery," which buds and blossoms with the dearest 
httle ducks of ducks, broad-billed, downy, toddling, 
tumbling in and out of a trough of water, and 
getting continually lost on the blufl" outside ; little 
chickens and turkeys, and great turkeys, not pleas- 
ant to the eye, but good for food, and turkey-gob- 
blers, stiffest-mannered of all the feathered crea- 
tion ; and geese, sailing in the creek majestic, or 



174 GALA-DAYS. 

waddling on the grass dumpy ; and two or three 
wild geese, tolled down from the sky, and clipped 
away from it forever ; and guinea-hens, speckled 
and spheral ; and, most magnificent of all, a pea- 
cock, who stands in a corner and unfolds the mag- 
nificence of his tail. Watching his movements, I 
could not but reflect upon the superior advantages 
which a peacock has over a woman. The gor- 
geousness of his appai'el is such that even Solomon 
in all his glory was not arrayed in the like ; yet 
so admirable is the contrivance for its manage- 
ment that no suspicion of mud or moisture stains 
its brilliancy. A woman must have recourse to 
clumsy contrivances of india-rubber and gutta- 
percha if her silken skirts shall not trail ignobly 
in the dust. The peacock at will rears his train 
in a graceful curve, and defies defilement. 

Besides abundance of food and parade-ground, 
these happy fowls have a very agreeable prospect. 
Their abrupt knoll commands a respectable section 
of the Androscoggin Valley, — rich meadow-lands, 
the humanities of church-spire and cottage, the 
low green sweep of the intervale through which 
the river croons its quiet way under shadows of 
rock and tree, answering softly to the hum of bee 
and song of bird, — answering just as softly to the 
snort and shriek of its hot-breathed rival, the 
railroad. Doubtless the railroad, swift, energetic, 
prompt, gives itself many an air over the slow- 
going, calm-souled water-way, but let Monsieur 



GALA-DAYS. 175 

Chcmin de Fer look to his laurels, — a thing of 
yesterday and to-morrow, — a thing of iron and 
oil and accidents. I, the River, descend from the 
everlasting mountains. I was born of the per- 
petual hills. I fear no more the heat o' the sun, 
nor the furious winter's rages ; no obstacle daunts 
me. Time cannot terrify. My power shall never 
faint, my foundations never shrink, my fountains 
never fail. 

" Men may come, and men may go, 
But I go on forever." 

And the railroad, pertinacious, intrusive, ag- 
gressive, is, after all, the dependent follower, the 
abject copyist of the river. Toss and scorn as it 
xnay, the river is its leader and engineer. Fortunes 
and ages almost would have been necessary to 
tunnel those mountains, if indeed tunnelling had 
been possible, but the river winds at its own sweet 
will. Without sound of hammer or axe, by force 
of its own heaven-born instincts, it has levelled its 
lovely way unerring, and wherever it goes, thither 
goes the railroad, to its own infinite gain. Rail- 
roads are not generally considered picturesque, but 
from the stand-point of that hennery, and from 
several other stand-points, I had no fault to find. 
Unable to go straight on, as the manner of rail- 
roads is, it bends to all the wayward little fancies 
of the river, piercing the wild wood, curling around 
the base of the granite hills, now let loose a space 
to shoot across the glade, joyful of the permission 



176 GALA-DAYS. 

to indulge its railroad instinct of straightness ; and, 
amid so much irregularity and headlong wilfulness, 
a straight line is really refreshing. Up the sides 
of its embankment wild vines have twisted and 
climbed, and wild-flowers have budded into bloom. 
Berlin Falls is hardly a wet-day resource, but 
the day on which we saw it changed its mind after 
we left the hotel, and from clouds and promise of 
sunshine turned into clouds and certainty of 
rain. For all that, the drive along the river, 
within sound of its roaring and gurgling and rip- 
pling and laughing overflow of joy, with occasional 
glimpses of it through the trees, with gray cloud- 
curtains constantly dropping, then suddenly lifting, 
and gray sheets of rain fringing down before us, 
and the thirsty, parched leaves, intoxicated with 
their much mead of the mountains, slapping us 
saucily on the cheek, or in mad revel flinging into 
our faces their goblets of honey-dew, — ah ! it was 
a caraival of tricksy delight, making the blood 
glow like wine. The falls, which chanced to be 
indeed no falls, but shower-swollen into rapids, 
are one of the most wonderful presentations of 
Nature's masonry that I have ever seen. It is 
not the water, but the rock, that amazes. The 
whole Androscoggin River gathers up its strength 
and plunges through a gorge, — a gateway in the 
solid rock as regular, as upright, as if man had 
brought in the w^hole force of his geometry and 
gunpowder to the admeasurement and excavation. 



GALA-DAYS. 177 

— plunges, conscious of imprisonment and the 
insult to its slighted majesty, — plunges with fierce 
protest and frenzy of rage, breaks against a grim, 
unyielding rock to dash itself into a thousand 
whirling waves ; then rushes on to be again im- 
prisoned between the pillars of another gorge, only 
less regular, not less inexorable, than the first ; 
then, leaping and surging, it beats against its banks, 
and is hurled wrathfully back in jets of spray and 
wreaths of foam ; or, soothed into gentler mood by 
the soft touch of mosses on the brown old rocks, it 
leaps hghtly up their dripping sides, and trickles 
back from the green, wet, overhanging spray, and 
so, all passion sobbed away, it babbles down to its 
bed of Lincoln green, where Robin Hood and 
Maid Marian wait under the oaken boughs. 

In the leaden, heavy air the scene was sombre, 

— tragic. In sunshine and shadows it must have 
other moods, perhaps a different character ; I did 
not see the sunshine play upon it. 

But the day of days you shall give to the moun- 
tain. The mountain, Washington, king of all 
this Atlantic coast, — at least till but just now, 
when some desiginlne; Warwick comes forward to 
press the claims of an ignoble Carolinian upstart, 
with, of course, a due and formidable array of 
feet and figures : but if they have such a moun- 
tain, where, I should like to know, has he been all 
these years ? A mountain is not a thing that you 
can put away in your pocket, or hide under the 

8* L 



178 GALA-DAYS. 

eaves till an accident reveals its whereabouts. 
Verily our misguided brethren have much to do to 
make out a case ; and, in the firm belief that I am 
climbing up the highest point of land this side the 
Rocky Mountains, I begin my journey. 

Time was when the ascent of Mount Washing- 
ton could be justly considered a difficult and dan- 
gerous feat ; but the Spirit of the Age, who has 
many worse things than this to answer for, has 
struck in and felled and graded and curbed, till 
now one can ascend the mountain as safely as he 
goes to market. I consider this road one of the 
greatest triumphs of that heavily responsible spirit. 
Loquacious lovers of the " romantic " lament 
the absence of danger and its excitements, and 
the road does indeed lie open to that objection. 
He who in these latter days would earn a repu- 
tation for enterprise — and I fancy the love of 
adventure to be far less common than the love 
of being thought adventurous — must have re- 
course to some such forlorn hope as going up 
the mountain on the ice in midwinter, or coast- 
ino; down on a hand-sled. But I have no inch- 
nation in that direction. I am willing to en- 
counter risks, if there is no other way of attaining 
objects. But risks in and of themselves are a 
nuisance. If there is no more excellent way, of 
course you must clamber along steep, rugged 
stairways of bridle-paths, where a single misstep 
will send you plunging upon a cruel and bloody 



GALA-DAYS. 179 

death ; but so far as choice goes, one would much 
more wisely ride over a civiHzed road, where he 
can have his whole mind for the mountain, and 
not be continually hampered with fears and watch- 
fulness for his own personal safety. It is a great 
mistake to suppose that discomfort is necessarily 
heroism. Besides, to have opened a caiTiage-way up 
the mountain is to have brouo-ht the mountain with 
all its possessions down to the cradle of the young 
and the crutch of the old, — almost to the couch of 
the invahd. I saw recorded ao^ainst one name in 
the books of the Tip-top House the significant item, 
" aged eight months." Probably the youngster 
was not directly much benefited by his excursion, 
but you are to remember that perhaps his mother 
could not have come without him, and therein lay 
the benefit. The day before our ascent, a lady 
over seventy years old ascended without extreme 
fatigue or any injury. Several days after, a lady 
with apparently but a few weeks of earth before 
her, made the ascent to satisfy the longings of her 
heart, and gaze upon the expanses of this, before the 
radiance of another world should burst upon her 
view. If people insist upon encountering danger, 
they can find a swift river and ford it, or pile up a 
heap of stones and climb them, or volunteer to 
serve their country in the army : meanwhile, let 
us rejoice that thousands who have been shut away 
from le feast mav now sit down to the table of 
the Lord. 



180 GALA-DAYS. 

This road, we were told, was begun about eight 
years ago, but by disastrous circumstances its com- 
pletion was delayed until within a year or two. 
Looking at the country through which it lies, the 
only wonder is that it ever reached completion. 
As it is, I believe its proprietors do not consider 
it quite finished, and are continually working upon 
its improvement. Good or bad, it seems to me to 
be much the best road anywhere in the region. 
The pitches and holes that would fain make coach- 
ing on the common roads so precarious are entirely 
left out here. The ascent is continuous. Not a 
step but leads upward. The rise was directed never 
to exceed one foot in six, and it does not ; the aver- 
age is one foot in eight. Of course, to accomplish 
this there must be a great deal of winding and 
turning. In one place you can look down upon 
wh^^ seem to be three roads running nearly par- 
allel along a ridge, but what is really the one road 
twisting to its ascent. Some idea of the skill and 
science required to engineer it may be gathered by 
looking into the tangled wilderness and rocky rough- 
ness that lie still each side the way. Through 
such a gnarled, knotted, interlaced jungle of big 
trees and little trees, and all manner of tano-led 
twining undergrowths, lining the sides of preci- 
pices, or hanging with bare roots over them, con- 
cealing dangers till the shuddering soul almost 
plunges into them, the road-men carefully and 
painfully sought and fought their way. Up on 



GALA-DAYS. 181 

the rocky heights it was comparatively easy, for, 
as one very expressively phrased it, every stone 
which they pried up left a hole and made a hole. 
The stone wrenched from above rolled below, and 
80 lowered the height and raised the depth, and 
constantly tended to levelness. Besides, there 
were no huge tree-trunks to be extracted from the 
unwilling jaws of the mountain by forest-dentists, 
with much sweat and toil and pain of dentist if not 
of jaws. Since, also, the rise of one foot in six 
was considered as great as was compatible with 
the well-being and well-doing of horses, whenever 
the way came upon a knob or a breastwork that 
r^^fused to be brought down within the orthodox 
dimensions, it must turn. If the knob would not 
yield, the way must, and, in consequence, its length- 
ened bitterness is long drawn out. A line that 
continually doubles on itself is naturally longer 
than one which goes straight to the mark. Mount 
Washington is little more than a mile high ; the 
road that creeps up its surly sides is eight miles 
long. Frost and freshet are constant foes ; the 
one heaves and cracks, and the other tears down 
through the cracks to undermine and destroy. 
Twenty-seven new culverts, we were told, had 
been made, within the space of a mile and a half, 
since last year ; and these culverts are no child's 
play, but durable works, — aqueducts lined with 
stone and bridged with plank, large enough for a 
man to pass through with a wheelbarrow, and laid 



182 ' GALA-DA VS. 

diagonally across the road, so that the torrents 
pouring down the gutter shall not have to turn a 
right angle, which they would gladly evade doing, 
but a very obtuse one, which they cannot in 
conscience refuse ; and, as the road all the way 
is built a little higher on the precipice side than on 
the mountain side, the water naturally runs into the 
gutter on that side, and so is easily beguiled into 
leaving the road, which it would delight to destroy, 
and, roaring through the culvert, tumbles unwarily 
down the precipice before it knows what it is 
about. 

I have heard it said, that the man who originated 
this road has since become insane. More likely 
he was insane at the time. Surely, no man in his 
senses would ever have projected a scheme so wild 
and chimerical, so evidently impossible ctf fulfil- 
ment. > Projected it was, however, not only in 
fancy, mit in fact, to our great content ; and so, 
tamely but comfortably, an untiring cavalcade, we 
leave the peaceful glen set at the mountain's 
base, and wind through the lovely, lively woods, 
tremulous with sunshine and shadows, musical 
with the manifold songs of its pregnant soli- 
tudes, out from the woods, up from the woods, ' 
into the wild, cold, shrieking winds, among the 
blenched rocks and the pale ghosts of dead forests 
stiff and stark, up and up among the caverns, and 
the gorges, and the dreadful chasms, piny ravines 
black and bottomless, steeps bare and rocky lead- 



GALA-DAYS. 183 

iiig down to awful depths ; on and on, fighting with 
the maddened winds and the startled, wrathful 
wraiths, onward and upward till we stand on the 
bleak and shivering, the stony and soulless summit^ 

Desolation of desolations ! Desolation of desola- 
tions ! How terrible is this place ! The shining 
mountain that flashed back to the sun his radiance 
is become a bald and frowning desert that appalls 
us with its barrenness. The sweet and sylvan 
approach gave no sign of such a goal, but the war 
between life and death was even then begun. The 
slant sunlight glinted through the jungle and 
bathed us with its glory of golden-green. The 
shinnig boles of the silvery gray birch shot up 
straight, and the white birch unrolled its patches 
of dead pallor in the sombre, untrodden depths. 
The sprtices quivered like pure jellies tipped with 
light, sunshme prisoned in every green crystal. 
Myrtle- vines ran along the ground, the bunch- 
berry hung out its white banner, and you scarcely 
saw the trees that lay faint and fallen in the arms 
of their mates. The damp, soft earth nourished its 
numerous brood, Terrce omni parentis alumnos, its 
own thirsty soul continually refreshed from springs 
whose sparkle we could not see, though the gurgle 
and ripple of their march sung out from so many 
hiding-places that we seemed to be 

" Seated in hearing of a hundred streams." 

Whole settlements of the slender, stately brakes 



184 GALA-DAYS. 

filled the openings, and the mountain-ash drooped 
in graceful curves over our heads, but gradually 
the fine tall trees dwindled into dwarfs, chilled to 
the heart by the silent, pitiless cold. Others bat- 
tled bravely with the howding winds, which havs 
stripped them bare on one side, while they seem 
to toss out their arms wildly on the other, implor- 
ing protection and aid from the valley-dwellers 
below. Up and up, and you come suddenly upon 
the " Silver Forest," a grove of dead white trees, 
naked of leaf and fruit and bud, bare of color, 
dry of sap and juice and life, retaining only their 
form, — cold set outline of their hale and hearty 
vigor ; a skeleton plantation, bleaching in the 
frosty sun, yet mindful of its past existence, 
sturdy, and defiant of the woodman's axe ; a fi'ost- 
work mimicry of nature, a phantom forest. On 
and on, turning to overlook the path you have 
trodden, at every retrospect the struggle between 
life and death becomes more and more palpable. 
The Destroyer has hurled his winds, his fi^osts, his 
fires ; and gray wastes, broken wastes, black wastes, 
attest with what signal power. But life follows 
closely, planting his seeds in the very footprints of 
death. Where blankness and bleakness seem to 
reign, a tiny life springs in mosses, rich with prom- 
ise of better things. Long forked tongues of green 
are lapping up the dreary wastes, and will presently 
overpower them with its vivid tints. Even amid 
the blanched petrifaction of the Silver Grove fresh 



GALA^DAYS. 185 

growths are creeping, and the day is not far dis- 
tant that shall see those pale statues overtopped, 
submerged, lost in an emerald sea. Even among 
the rocks, the strife rages. Some mysterious prin- 
ciple inheres in the insensate rock, whose loss 
makes this crumbling, discolored, inert debris. Up 
you go, up and up, and life dies out. Chaos and 
ruin reign supreme. Headlong steeps yawn be- 
side your path, losing their depths in darkness. 
Great fragments of rock cover all the ground, 
lie heaped, pile upon pile, jagged, gray, tilted 
into a thousand sharp angles, refusing a foot- 
hold, or offering it treacherously. Wild work has 
been' here ; and these gigantic wrecks bear silent 
wi ness of the uproar. It seems but a pause, not 
a peace. Agiocochook, Great Mountain of Spirits, 
rendezvous of departed souls, clothed with the 
strength and fired with the passions of the gods, — 
in what caverns under the cliffs do the wearied 
Titans rest ? From what dungeons of gloom 
emerging shall they renew their elemental strife ? 
What shall be the sign of their awaking to darken 
the earth with their missiles and deafen the skies 
with their thunder ? And what daring of man is 
this to scorn his smiling valleys and adventure up 
into these realms of storm ? No Titan he, yet the 
truest Titan of all, for he wrestled and overcame. 
No giant he, yet grander than the giants, since 
without Pelion or Ossa he has scaled heaven. 
Through uncounted aeons the mountain has been 



186 GALA-DAYS. 

gathering its forces. Frost and snow and ice and 
the wiUing winds have been its sworn retainers. 
Cold and famine and death it flaunted in the face 
of the besieger. Man is of a day, and the ele- 
ments are but slippery allies. A spade and a com- 
pass are his meagre weapons ; yet man has con- 
quered. The struggle was long, with many a rec- 
onnoissance and partial triumph, but at length the 
victory is complete. Man has placed his hand on 
the monarch's mane. He has pierced leviathan 
with a hook. The secrets of the mountain are un- 
covered. His fastnesses conceal no treasures that 
shall not be spread out to the day. His bolts and 
bars of ice can no longer press back the foot of the 
invader. Yon gray and slender ribbon, that floats 
down his defiles, disappearing now over his ledges 
to reappear on some lower range, and lie lightly 
across the plateau, — that is his bridle of submis- 
sion, his badge of servitude. Obedient to that, he 
yields up his hoarded wealth and pays tribute, a 
vassal to his lord. Men and women and little 
children climb up his rugged sides, and the crown 
upon his beetling brows is set in the circle of 
humanity. 

In the first depression of abandonment one loses 
heart, and sees only the abomination of desolation ; 
but gradually the soul lifts itself from the barren 
earth, and floats out upon the ocean, in which one 
stands islanded on a gray rock, fixed in seas of 
sunshine. 



GALA-DAYS. 187 

Whether you shall have a fair day or a foul is 
35 may be. At the mountain's base they discreetly 
promise you nothing. It may be sunny and sultry 
down there, while storms and floods have at it on 
the peak. But mine was a day of days, — clear, 
alternating with cloudy. When you had looked 
long enough to dazzle and weary your eyes, a 
cloud would come and fold you about with opaque- 
ness, and while you waited in the cloud, lo here ! 
lo there ! it flashed apart and shimmered yonder a 
blue sky, a brilliant landscape, and the distant level 
of the sea ; or slowly its whiteness cleaved and 
rolled away, revealing a glorified mountain, a lake 
lying in the shadows, or the simple glen far down 
from which we came. It was constant change and 
ever-new delight. 

But this going up mountains is a bad thing for 
the clouds. * All their fleecy softness, all their pink 
and purple and pearly beauty, all the mystery of 
their unattainableness, is weighed in the balance 
and found to be fog, and by no means unapproach- 
able. They will never impose upon us again. 
Never more will they ride through the serene 
blue, white-stoled cherubs of the sky. Henceforth 
there is very little sky about them. Sail away, 
little cloud, little swell, little humbug. ' Make be- 
lieve you are away up in the curves of the sky. 
Not one person in fifty will climb a mountain and 
find you out. But I have been there, and you are 
nothing but fog, of the earth, earthy. And when 



188 GALA-DAYS. 

I sat in the cleft of a rock on the side of Mount 
Washington, every fibre chilled through with your 
icy moisture, I could with a good will have sent 
a sheriff to arrest you for obtaining love under 
false pretences. O you innocent, child-like cloud ! 
heaving with warmth and passion as we saw, but a 
gray little imp, cold at the heart, and malignant, 
and inexorable, as we felt. 

Felt it only when we did feel it, after all ; for 
no sooner did it roll slowly away, and, ceasing to 
be a discomfort, turn into scenery, than all its 
olden witchery came back. I have had no more 
than a glimpse of the world from a mountain. 
The evening and the morning were the first 
day ; and, till time shall be no more, the even- 
ino; and the mornino; will be all that there is of 
the day, aesthetically considered. Yet at noon, — 
the most unfascinating hour, — and in the early 
afternoon, though you must needs fail of the twi- 
light and its forerunners, there is an intensity 
of brilliance and an immensity of breadth, that, it 
seems to me, must be greater than if the view 
Avere broken up by light and shade. You are 
blinded with a flood of radiance, disturbed, or 
rather increased, by the fiitting cloud-shadows. 
The mountains deepen in the distance, burning 
red in the glare of the sun, bristling with pines, 
mottled with the various tints of oak and maple 
relieving the soberer evergreens purpling on the 
slopes through a spiritual hazy glow, delicatest 



GALA-DAYS. 189 

la^-ender, and peari, where they lie scarcely pen- 
cilling the distant horizon. The clouds come sail- 
ing over, flinging their shadows to the plains, — 
shadows wavering down the mountain-sides with 
an indescribable sweet tremulousness, scudding 
over the lower summits, pursued by some frolic- 
some gale which we do not see, or resting softly 
in the dells, whose throbbing soothes itself to still- 
ness in the grateful shade. And still, midway 
between heaven and earth, snatched up from the 
turmoil of the one into the unspeakable calm of 
the other, a great peace and rest sink into our 
souls. All around lies the earth, shining and silent 
as the sky, rippling in little swells of light, break- 
ing into luminous points, rising into shapely shafts, 
spreading in limpid, molten silver, and all bathed, 
transmuted, glorified, with ineffable light, and 
sacred with eternal silence. 

A bubble of home-life adheres to this stern peak. 
Determination and perseverance have built two 
stone cottages, rough and squat, where you may, 
if you have no mercy, eat a fine dinner that 
has been wearily dragged over eight miles of hil- 
locky, rutty roads, and up eight miles of moun- 
tain ; and drink without any compunction clear, 
cold water that the clouds have distilled without 
any trouble, and the rocks have bottled up in 
excellent refrigerators and furnish at the shortest 
notice and on the most reasonable terms, except 



190 GALA-DAYS. 

in very diy weather. Or if ' a drought drinks 
up the supply in the natural wells, there is the 
Lake of the Clouds, humid and dark below, where 
you may see — I do not know — the angels 
ascending and descending. The angels of the 
summit are generally armed with a huge hoop, 
which supports their brace of buckets as they step 
cautiously over the cragged rock fragments. If 
you are ambitious to scale the very highest height, 
you can easily mount the roof of the most frivo- 
lously named Tip-top House, and change your 
horizon a fraction. If you are gregarious and 
crave society, you can generally find it in multi- 
farious developments. Hither come artists with 
sketch-books and greedy eyes. Hither come 
photographers with instruments, and photograph 
us all, men, mountains, and rocks. Young ladies 
come, and find, after all their trouble, that " there 
is nothing but scenery," and sit and read novels. 
Hand ignota loquor. Young men come, alight 
from their carriages, enter the house, balance 
themselves on two legs of their chairs, smoke a 
cigar, eat a dinner, and record against their names, 
" Mount Washington is a humbug," — which is 
quite conclusive as concerning the man, if not 
concerning the mountain. There is one man in 
whose fate I feel a lively curiosity. As we 
were completing our descent, twisted, frowzy, 
blown to shreds, burnt faces, parched lips, and 
stringy hair, a solitary horseman might have been 



GALA-DAYS. 191 

seen just commencing his ascent, — the nicest 
young man that ever was, — daintily gloved, pa- 
tently booted, oilily curled, snowily wristbanded, 
with a lovely cambric (^prima facie) handkerchief 
bound about his hyacin thine locks and polished 
hat. What I wish to know is, how did he get 
aloncj ? How did his toilette stand the ascent ? 

^ Did he, a second Ulysses, tie up all opposing winds 
in that cambric pocket-handkerchief? or did Aus- 
ter and Eurus and Notus and Africus vex his 
fastidious soul? 

They say — I do not know who, but somebody 
— that Mount Washington in past ages towered 
hundreds of feet above its present summit. Con- 
stant wear and tear of frost and heat have brought 
it down, and its crumbling rock testifies to the still 
active progress of decay. The mountain will 
therefore one day flat out, and if we live long 
enough, Halicarnassus remarks, we may yet see 
the Tip-top and Summit Houses slowly let down 
and standing on a rolling prairie. Those, there- 
fore, who prefer mountain to meadow should take 

\varning and make their pilgrimage betimes. 

It is likely that you will be the least in the world 
tired and a good deal sunburnt when you reach 
the Glen House ; and, in defiance of all the physi- 
ologies, you will eat a hearty supper and go 
straight to bed, and it won't hurt you in the 
least. Nothing ever does among the mountains. 
The first you will know, you open your eyes and 



192 GALA-DAYS. 

it is morning, and there is Mount Washington 
coming right in at your window, bearing down 
upon you with his seamed and shadowy massive- 
ness, and you will forget how rough and rocky he 
was yesterday, and will pay homage once more to 
his dignity of imperial purple and his solemn 
royalty. 

The moment you are well awake, you find you 
are twice as good as new, and after breakfast, if 
you are sagacious, no one belonging to you will 
have any peace until you are striking out into the 
woods again, — the green, murmurous w^oods, ten- 
anted by innumerable hosts of butterflies in their 
sunny .outskirts, light-winged Psyches hovering 
in the warm, rich air, stained and spotted and 
splashed with every bright hue of yellow and 
scarlet and russet, set off against brilliant blacks 
and whites ; dark, cool woods carpeted with mosses 
thick, soft, voluptuous with the silent tribute of 
ages, and in their luxurious depths your willing 
feet are cushioned, — more blessed than feet of 
Persian princess crushing her woven lilies and 
roses ; the tender, sweet-scented woods lighted 
with bright wood-sorrel, and fragrant with dews 
and damps ; — to the Garnet pool, perhaps, first, 
where the water has rounded out a basin in the 
rock, and with incessant whirls and eddies has 
hollowed numerous little sockets, smooth and regu- 
lar, till you could fancy yourself looking upon the 
remains of a petrified, sprawling, and half-sub- 



GALA-DAYS. 193 

merged monster. Where the water is still, it is 
beautifully colored and shadowed with the sur- 
rounding verdancy and flickering light and mo- 
tion. If you have courage and a firm foothold, if 
you will not slip on wet rock, and do not mind 
your hands and knees in climbing up a dry one, 
if you can coil yourself around a tree that juts out 
over a path you wish to follow, you can reach 
points where the action of the water, violent and 
riotous, can be seen in all its reckless force. But, 
" Don't hold on by the trees," says Halicarnassus ; / / 
" you will get your gloves pitchy." This to me, ' "* 
when I was in imminent danger of pitching myself 
incontinently over the rocks, and down into the 
whirlpools ! 

Glen Ellis Falls we found in a random saunter, 
— a wild, white water-leap, lithe, intent, deter- 
mined, rousing you far off by the incessant roar of 
its battle-flood, only to burst upon you as aggres- 
sive, as unexpected and momentary, as if no bugle- 
peal had heralded its onset. Leaning against a 
tree that juts out over the precipice, clinging by 
its roots to the earth behind, and affording you 
only a problematical support, you look down upon 
a green, translucent pool, lying below rocks thick- 
set with hardy shrubs and trees, up to the narrow 
fall that hurls itself down the cleft which it has 
grooved, concentrated and alert at first, then 
wavering out with little tremors into the scant 
sunshine, and meeting the waters beneath to re- 



194 GALA-DAYS. 

bound with many a spring of surge and spray. A 
strange freak of the water-nymphs it is that has 
fashioned this wild gulf and gorge, softened it with 
the waving of verdure, and inspirited it with the 
energy of eager waters. 

Unsated we turn in again, thridding the resinous 
woods to track the shy Naiads hiding in their 
coverts. Over the brown spines of the pines, soft 
and perfumed, we loiter, following leisurely the 
faint warble of waters, till we come to the boiling 
rapids, where the stream comes hurrying down, 
and with sudden pique flies apart, on one side 
going to form the Ellis, on the other the Peabody 
River, and where in five minutes a stalwart arm 
could drain the one and double the other. Indeed, 
the existence of these two rivers seems to be a 
question of balance and coincidence and hair- 
breadth escapes. Our driver pointed out to. us a 
tree whose root divides their currents. We pause 
but a moment on the crazy little bridge, and then 
climb along to the foot of the " Silver Cascade," 
farther and higher still, till we can see the little 
brook murmuring on its mountain way in the cliff 
above, and look over against it, and down upon it, 
as it streams through the rock, leaps adown the 
height, widening and thinning, spreading out over 
the face of the declivity, transmuting it into crys- 
tal, and veiling it with foam, leaping over in a 
hundred little arcs, lightly bounding to its basin 
below, then sweeping finely around the base of 



GALA-DAYS. 195 

the projecting rock, and going on its way singincr 
its song of triumph and content. A gentle and 
beautiful Undine, the worshii)ping boughs bend 
to receive its benediction./^ Venturesome mosses 
make perpetual little incuMons into its lapping 
tide, and divert numberless little streams to trickle 
around their darkness, and leap up again in silver 
jets, clapping their hands for joy. I 

r Now thanks to Heaven that of its grace 
\ Hath led me to this lonely place ; 

Joy have I had, and going hence 

I bear away my recompense." ) 

All good and holy thoughts come to these soli- 
tudes. Here selfishness dies away, and purity and 
magnanimity expand, the essence and germ of life. 
Sitting here in these cool recesses, screened from 
the sun, moist and musical with the waters, crusts 
of worldHness and vanity cleave oif from the soul. 
The din dies away, and, with ears attuned to the 
harmonies of nature, we are soothed to summer 
quiet. The passion and truth of life flame up into 
serene but steadfast glow. Every attainment be- 
comes possible. Inflated ambitions shrivel, and we 
reach after the Infinite. Weak desire is welded into 
noble purpose. Patience teaches her perfect work, 
and vindicates her divinity. The unchangeable 
rocks that fiice the unstable waters typify to us 
our struggle and our victory. Day by day the 
conflict goes on. Day by day the fixed battle- 
ments recede and decay before their volatile oppo- 



196 GALA-DAYS. 

nent. Imperceptibly weakness becomes strength, 
and persistence channels its way. God's work is 
accomplished slowly, but it is accomplished. Time 
is not to Him who commands eternit}^ ; and man, 
earth-born, earth-bound, is bosomed in eternity. 

One and another has a preference, choosing 
rather this than that, and claiming the palm for a 
third ; but with you there is no comparison. 
Each is perfect in his kind. Each bodies his own 
character and breathes his own expression. 

O to lie here through long, long summer days, 
drenched with coolness and shadow and solitude, 
cool, cool, cool to the innermost drop of my hot 
heart's-blood ! 

Never ! 

Why do I linger among the mountains ? You 
have seen them all. Nay, verily, I could believe 
that eyes had never looked upon them before. 
They were new created for me this summer-day. 
I plucked the flower of their promise. I touched 
the vigor of their immortal youth. 

But mountains must be read in the original, not 
in translation. Only their own rugged language, 
spealdng directly to eye and heart, can fully inter- 
pret their meaning. What have adjectives, in 
their wildest outburst, to do with rocks upheaved, 
furrows ploughed, features chiselled, thousands and 
thousands of years back in the conjectured past ? 
What is a pen-scratch to a ravine ? 



GALA-DAYS. 197 

For speed and ease cars are, of course, unsur- 
passed ; but for romance, observation, interest, 
there is nothing Hke the old-fashioned coach. Cars 
are city ; coaches are country. Cars are the 
luxurious life of well-bom and long-pursed peo- 
ple ; coaches are the stirring, eventful career of 
people who have their own way to make in 
the- world. Cars shoot on independent, thrust- 
ing off your sympathy wnth a snort ; coaches 
admit you to all the little hnmanities, every jolt 
harmonizes and adjusts you, till you become a loco- 
motive world, tunefully rolling on in your orbit, 
independent of the larger world beneath. This is 
coacliing in general. Coaching among the White 
Mountains is a career by itself, — I mean, of course, 
if you take it on the outside. How life may look 
from tlie i?Tside I am unable to say, ha vino* stead- 
fastly avoided that stand-point. When we set out 
it rained, and I had a battle to fight. First, it was 
attempted to bestow me inside, to which, if I had 
been a bala^of goods, susceptible of injuiy by 
water, I might have assented. But for a living 
person, with an internal furnace well fed with fuel, 
in constant operation, to pack himself in a box on 
account of a shower, is absurd. What if it did 
rain ? I desired to see how thino-s looked in the 
rain. Besides, it was not incessant ; there were 
continual liftings of cloud and vapor, glimpses of 
clear sky, and a constant changing of tints, from 
flashing, dewy splendor, through the softness of 



198 GALA-DAYS. 

shining mists, to the glooms of gray clouds, and 
the blinding, uncompromising rain, — so that I 
would have ridden in a cistern rather than have 
failed to see it. Well, when the outside was seen 
to be a fixed fact, then I must sit in the middle 
of the coachman's seat. Why ? That by boot, 
umbrellas, and a man on each side, I might be 
protected in flank, and rear, and van. I said 
audibly, that I would rather be set quick i' the 
earth, and bowled to death with turnips. If my 
object had been protection, I should have gone in- 
side. This was worse than inside, for it was inside 
contracted. If I looked in front, there was an 
umbrella with rare glimpses of a steaming horse ; 
on each side, the exhilarating view of a great coat; 
behind, a pair of boots. I might as well have been 
buried alive. No, the upper seat was the only 
one for a civilized and enlightened being to occupy. 
There you could be free and look about, and not 
be crowded ; and I am hai)py to be able to say, that 
I am not so unused to water as to be afraid of a 
little more or less of it. So I ceased to argue, 
planted myself on the upper seat, grasped the 
j railing, and smiled on the angry remonstrants be- 
/ low, — smiled, but stuck/ "Let her go," said 
the driver in a savage, whispered growl, — not 
to me, but a little bird told me, — " let her go. 
Can't never do nothin' with women. . They never 
know what 's good for 'em. When she 's well 
wet, then she '11 want to be dried." True, O 



GALA-DAYS. 199 

driver ! and thrice that morning you stopped to 
change horses, and thrice with knightlj grace you 
helped me down from the coach-top, gentle-handed 
and smooth of brow and tongue, as if no storm had 
ever lowered on that brow or muttered on that 
tongue, and thrice I went into the village inns and 
brooded over the hospitable stoves, and dried my 
dripping garments ; and when once your voice rang 
through the hostelrie, wdiile yet I was enveloped in 
clouds of steam, did not the good young woman 
seize her sizzling flat-iron from the stove, and iron 
me out on her big table, so that I went not only 
dry and comfortable, but smooth, uncreased, and 
respectable, foj'th into the outer world again ? 




VI 



HITS I rode, amplilbious and happy, 
^ on the top of the coach, with only one 

Sy'll person sharing the seat with me, and 
p^^ he fortunately a stranger, and there- 
fore sweet-tempered, and a very agreeable and 
intelligent man, talking sensibly when he talked 
at all, and talking at all only now and then. 
Veiy agreeable and polite ; but presently he asked 
me in courteous phrase if he might smoke, and 
of course I said yes, and the fi-agrant white smoke- 
wreaths mingled with the valley vapors, and as I 
sat narcotized and rapt, looking, looking, looking 
into the lovely landscape, and looking it into me, 
twisting the jagged finger-ends of my gloves around 
the protruding ends of my fingers, — dreadfully 
jagged and forlorn the poor gloves looked with 
their long travel. I don't know how it is, but in 
all the novels that I ever read, the heroines always 
have delicate, spotless, exqiiisite gloves, which are 
continually lying about in the garden-paths, and 
which their lovers are constantly picking up and 



GALA-DAYS. 201 

pressing to tlieir hearts and lips, and treasuring 
in little golden boxes or something, and saying 
how like the soft glove, pure and sweet, is to 
the beloved owner ; and it is all very pretty, 
but I cannot think how they manage it. I am 
sure I should be very sorry to have my lovers 
go about picking up my gloves. I don't have 
them a week before they change color ; the thumb 
gapes at its base, the little finger rips away fi'om 
the next one, and they all burst out at the ends ; 
a stitch drops in the back and slides down to 
the wrist before you know it has started. You 
can mend, to be sure, but for every darn yawn 
twenty holes. I admire a dainty glove as much 
as any one. I look with enthusiasm not unmin- 
gled with despair at these gloves of romance ; 
but such things do not depend entirely upon 
taste, as male writers seem to think. A pair 
of gloves cost a dollar and a half, and when you 
have them, your lovers do not find them in the 
summer-house. Why not? Because they are 
lying snugly wrapped in oiled-silk in the upper 
oureau-drawer, only to be taken out on great occa- 
sions. You would as soon think of wearing Vic- 
toria's crown for a head-dress, as those gloves on a 
picnic. So it happens that the gloves your lovers 
find will be sure to be Lisle-thread, and dingy and 
battered at that ; for how can you pluck fiowers and 
pull vines and tear away mosses without getting 
them dingy and battered ? — and the most fastid- 

9* 



202 GALA-DAYS. 

ious lover in the world cannot expect you to buy 
a new pair every time. For me, I keep my 
gloves as long as the backs hold together, and 
go around for forty-five weeks of the fifty-two 
with my hands clenched into fists to cover omis- 
sions. 

Let us not, however, dismiss the subject with 
this apologetic notice, for there is another side. 
There is a basis of attack, as well as defence. I 
not only apologize, but stand up for this much- 
abused article. Though worn gloves are indeed 
less beautiful than fresh ones, they have more 
character. Take one just from the shop, how 
lank and wan it is, — a perfect monotony of in- 
sipidity ; but in a day or two it plumps out, it 
curls over, it wabs up, it wrinkles and bulges and 
stands alone. All the joints and hollows and 
curves and motions of your hands speak through 
its outlines. Twists and rips and scratches and 
stains bear silent witness of your agitation, your 
activity, your merry-making. Here breaks through 
the irrepressible energy of your nature. Let harm- 
less negatives rejoice in their stupid integrity. 
Genius is expansive and iconoclastic. Enterprise 
cannot be confined by kid or thread or silk. The life 
that is in you must have fiill swing, even if snap 
go the buttons and gray go the gloves. Truly, if 
historians had but eyes to see, the record of one's 
experience might be written out from the bureau- 
drawer. Happy a thousand times that historians 
have not eyes to see. 



GALA-DAYS. 203 

As to mending gloves, after the first attack it 
is time lost. Let one or two pairs, kept for show 
and state, be irreproachable ; but the rest are for 
service, and everybody knows that little serving 
can be done with bandaged hands. You must 
take hold of things without gloves, or, wdiich 
amounts to the same thing, with gloves that let 
your fingers through, or you cannot reasonably 
expect to take hold of things with any degree of 
efficiency. 

So, as I was saying, I sat on the coach-top 
twisting my gloves, and I wished in my heart that 
men would not do such things as that very agree- 
able gentleman was doing. I do not design to 
enter on a crusade asrainst tobacco. It is a mooted 

o 

point in minor morals, in which every one must 
judge for himself; but I do wish men would not 
smoke so much. In fact, I should be pleased if 
they did not smoke at all. I do not believe there 
is any necessity for it. I believe it is a mere habit 
of self-indulgence. Women connive at it, because 
— well, because, in a way, they must, f Men are 
<"hildish, and, as I have said before, animal. I don't 
think they have nearly the self-restraint, self-denial, 
high dignity and purity and conscience that women 
have, — take them in the mass. J They give over 
to habits and pleasures like great boys. People 
talk about the extravagance of women., But men 
are equally so, only their extravagance takes a 
different turn. A woman's is aesthetic ; a man's 



204 r GALA-DAYS. 

is gross. She buys fine clothes and furnitnr^ 
He panders to his bodily appetites. Which is \ 
worse ? Women love men, and wish to be lovedy 
by them, and are miserable if they are not. 



the wife lets her husband do twenty things which 
he ought not to do, which it is rude and selfish ^5 
and wicked for him to do, rather than run the risk *s^ 
of loosening the cords which bind him to her. -^ 
One can see every day how women manage, — r- ^ 
the very w^ord tells the whole story, — manage \'^ 
men, by cunning strategy, cajolery, and all man-y^^ 
ner of indirections, just as if they were elephants. 
But if men were what they ought to be, there 
would be no such humiliating necessity. They 
ought to be so upright, so candid, so just, that it is 
only necessary to show this is right, this is reason- 
able, this is wrong, for them to do it, or to refrain 
from the doing. As it is, men smoke by the hour 
together, and their wives are thankful it is nothing 
worse. They would not dare to make a serious 
attempt to annihilate the pipe. They feel that 
they hold their own by a tenure so uncertain, that 
they are forced to ignore minor transgressions for 
the sake of retaining their throne. I do not say 
that women are entirely just and upright, but I do 
think that the womanly nature is good-er than the 
manly nature ; I think a very large proportion of 
female faults are the result of the indirect, but effec- 
tive wrong training they receive from men ; and I 
think, thirdly, that, take women just as they are, 



GALA-DAYS. 205 

wroncr trainino; and all, there Is not one in ten 
hundred thousand million who, if she had a faithful , 
and loving husband, would not be a faithful and^ 
loving wife. Men know this, and act upon it. 
They know that they can commit minor immorali- 
ties, and major ones too, and be forgiven. They 
know it is not necessary for them to keep them- 
selves pure in body and soul lest they alienate 
their wives. So they yield to their fleshly lusts. 
(What an ado would be made if a woman should 
form the habit of smoking, or any habit whose 
deleterious effects extend through her husband's 
or her father's rooms, cling to his wardrobe, books, 
and all his especial belongings ! i Suppose she 
should even demand an innocent ice-cream as 
frequently as her husband demands a cigar, — sup- 
pose she should spend as much time and money on 
candy as he spends on tobacco, — would she not be 
considered an extravagant, selfish, and somewhat 
vulgar woman ? But is it really any worse ? Is 
it less extravagant for a man to tickle his nose, 
than for a woman to tickle her palate ? If a cigar 
would enfoul the purity of a woman, does it not of 
a man ? Why is it more noble for a man to be 
the slave of an appetite or a habit, than for a wo- 
man ? Why is it less impure for a man to saturate ' 
his hair, his breath and clothing, with vile, stale 
odors, than for a woman ? What right have men 
to suppose that they can perfume themselves with 
stenches, — for whatever may be the fragrance of 



206 GALA-DAYS. 

a buniing cigar, the after smell is a stench, — an 
be any less offensive to a cleanly woman than 
woman similarly perfumed is to them? I hav 
never heard that the female sense of smell is lesi 
acute than the male. How dare men so presum 
on womanly sufferance ? They dare, because the 
know they are safe. I can tliink of a dozen of m 
own friends who will read this and bring out fa. 
fresh box of cigars, and smoke them under m 
very own face and eyes, and know all the time's 
that I shall keep liking them ; and the worst of it 
is, I know I shall, too. All the same, I do no!>t 
thoroughly respect a man who has a habit oi? 
smoking. 

But if men will smoke, as they certainly wiPi, 
because they are animal and stubborn and self- 
indulgent and self-willed, let them at least confines 
their fireworks to their own apartments. If a wife 
would rather admit her fuliginous husband to her 
sitting-room than forego his society altogether, 
— as undoubtedly most women would, for you 
see it is not a question between a smoky husband 
and a clear husband, but between a smoky one 
and none at all,^' because between his wife and his 
cigar the man will almost invariably choose the 
cigar^ — I have nothing to say. But don't let a 
man go into other people's houses and smoke, or, 
above all things, walk smoking by the side of 
women. No matter if she does give you per- 
mission when vou ask it. You should not have 



GALA-DAYS. 207 

iked it. We don't wish you to do it, you may 
e sure. It is a disrespectful thing. It par- 
akes of the nature of an insult. No matter how 
;rand or learned or distinguished you may be, 
on't do it. I saw once one of our Cabinet Min- 
sters Avalking, with his cigar in his mouth, by the 
•de of the wife of the British Minister, and it 
owered them both in my opinion, though I don't 
suppose either of them would take it much to 
heart if they knew" it. If you are walking in the 
woods or fields, it may be pardonable ; but in the 
public streets no private compact can be of any 
avail. It is a pubhc mark of disrespect. If you 
don't regard us enough to throw away or keep 
away your cigar when you join us, just don't join 
us. Keep your own side of the street. Nobody 
wants you ; at least I don't. Walk alone if you 
like, or with whomsoever you can, but if you walk 
with me, you shall " behave yourself." 

But how frightfully hungry these long coach 
stages make one ! especially among the mountains. 
Famine lurks in that wild air, and is ever spring- 
ing upon the unwary traveller. The fact was, 
however, that I had the most dreadful appetite all 
the way through. " Really," Halicarnassus would 
say, " it is quite charming to see you in such fine 
health," being at the same time reduced to a state 
of extreme disgust at my rapacity. He made an 
3stimate, one day, that I had eaten since we start- 
ed thirty-one and a half chickens, and I have no 

/ 



208 GALA-DA FS. 

doubt I had ; for chickens were my piece de resist- 
ance as well as entrees; and then they were chick- 
ens, not old hens, — little specks of darlings, just 
giving one hop from the egg-shell to the gridiron, 
and each time the waiter only brought you one 
bisegment of the speck, all of whose edible possi- 
bilities could easily be salted down in a thimble. I 
don't say this by way of complaint. A thimble- 
ful of delicacy is better than a " mountain of mum- 
my " ; and here let me put in a word in favor of 
that much-abused institution, hotels. I cannot 
see why people should go about complaining of 
them as they do, both in literature and in life. 
My experience has been almost always favorable. 
In New York, in Saratoga, in Canada, all through 
the mountain district, we found ample and ade- 
quate entertainment for man and beast. Trollope 
brings his sledge-hammer down unequivocally. Of 
course there will be certain viands not cooked 
precisely according to one's favorite method, and 
at these prolonged dining-tables you miss the 
home-feeling of quiet and seclusion ; but I should 
like to know if one does not travel on purpose to 
miss the home-feeling ? If that is what he seeks, it 
would be so easy to stay at home. One loses half 
the pleasure and profit of travelling if he must box 
himself up with his own party. It is a good thing 
to triturate against other people occasionally. For 
eating, there are, to be sure, the little oval dishes 
that have so aroused Trollopian and other ire; 



GALA-DA YS. 209 

and your mutton, it is true, is brought to you 
slice-wise, on your plate, instead of the whole 
sheep set bodily on the table, — the sole presenta- 
tion appreciated by your true Briton, who, with the 
traditions of his island home still clinging to him, 
conceives himself able, I suppose, in no other 
way to make sure that his meat and maccaroni are 
not the remnants of somebody else's feast. But 
let Britannia's son not flatter himself that so he 
shall escape contamination. His precautions are 
entirely fruitless. Suppose he does see the whole 
beast before him, and the very bean-vines, proof 
positive of first-fruits ; cannot the economical 
landlord gather up heave-shoulder and wave- 
breast and serve them out to him in next day's 
mince-pie ? Matter revolves, but is never annihi- 
lated. Ultimate and penultimate meals mingle in 
like the colors of shot-silk. Where there is a will, 
iiiere is a way. If the cook is of a frugal mind, 
and wills you to eat driblets, driblets you shall eat, 
under one shape or another. The only way to 
preserve your peace, is to be content with appear- 
ances. Take what is set before you, asking no 
questions for conscience' sake. If it looks nice, 
that is enough. Eat and be thankful. 

Troll ope says he never made a single comfort- 
able meal at an American hotel. The meat was 
swamming in grease, and the female servants un- 
ci\'il, impudent, dirty, slow, and provoking. Occa- 
sionally they are a little slow, it must hf^ confessed ; 



210 GALA-DAYS. 

but I never met with one, male or female, who was 
uncivil, impudent, or provoking. If I supposed it 
possible that my voice should ever reach our late 
critic, whose good sense and good spirit Ameri- 
cans appreciate, and whose name they would be 
glad to honor if everything English had not become 
suspicious to us, the possible synonyme of Pharisa- 
ism or stupidity, I should recommend to him Lord 
Chesterfield's assertion, that a man's own good 
breeding is the best security against other people's 
bad manners. For the greasy meats, let him fore- 
go meats altogether and take chickens, and he will 
not find grease enough to soil his best coat, if he 
should carry the chick away in his pocket. We 
always found a sufficient variety to enable us to 
choose a wholesome and a toothsome dinner, with 
many tempting dainties, and scores of dishes that 
I never heard of before, and ordered dubiously by 
way of experiment, and tasted timorously in pur- 
suit of knowledge. As for the corn-cake of the 
White Hills, if I live a thousand years, I never 
expect anything in the line of biscuit, loaf, or cakes 
more utterly satisfactory. It is the very ultimate 
crystallization of cereals, the poetry and rhythm of 
bread, brown and golden to the eye, like the lush 
loveliness of October, crumbling to the touch, un- 
utterable to the taste. It has all the ethereal, 
evanishing fascination of a spirit. Eve might have 
set it before Raphael. You scarcely dare touch it 
lest it disappear and leave you disappointed and 



GALA-DAYS. 211 

desolate. It is melting, insinuating, — a halo, 
hovering on the border-land of dream and reality, 
a beautiful but uncertain vision, a dissolving view. 
I said something of the sort to Halicarnassus one 
morning, and he said, Yes, it was — on my plate. 
And yet I have never had as much as I wanted 
of it, — never. The Others were perpetually fin- 
ishing their breakfast and compelling me, by a kind 
of moral violence, to finish mine. I made an at- 
tempt one morning, the last of my sojourn among 
the Delectable Mountains, when the opposing ele- 
ments had left the table prematurely to make 
arrangements for departure, and startled the waiter 
by ordering an unlimited supply of corn-cake. 
Like a thunder-bolt fell on my ear the terrible 
answer : " There is n't any this morning. It is 
brown bread." Me miserable ! 

As we went to dinner, in a large dining-room, 
upon our arrival at the Glen House, it seemed to 
me that the guests were the most refined and ele- 
gant in their general appearance of any company 
I had seen since my departure, and I had a pleas- 
ant New-English feeling of self-gratulation. But 
we were drawn up into line directly opposite a 
row of young girls, who really made me very 
uncomfortable. They were at an advanced stage 
of their dinner when we entered, and they de- 
A'Oted themselves to makino; observations. It was 
not curiosity, or admiration, or astonishment, or 
ho Tor. It was simply fixedness. They displayed 



212 GALA-DAYts. 

no emotion whatever, but every time your glance 
reached within forty-five degrees of them, there 
they were " staring right on with cahn, eternal 
eyes," and kept at it till the servants created a 
diversion with the dessert. Now, if there is any- 
thing that annoys and disconce]»ts me, it is to be 
looked at. Some women would have put them 
down, but I never can put anybody down. It is 
as much as I can do to liold my own, — and more, 
unless I am with well-bred people who always 
keep their equilibriums. One of these girls was 
the companion of a venerable and courtly gentle- 
man ; and the thought arose, How is it possible 
for this girl to have possibly that man's blood in 
her veins, certainly the aroma of his life floating 
around her, and the faultless model of his de- 
meanor before her, and not be the mirror of every 
grace? Of how little avail is birth or breeding, 
if the instinct of politeness be not in the heart. 
That last remark, however, must " right about 
face " in order to be just. If the instincts be 
true, birth and breeding are comparatively of no 
account, for the heart will dictate to the quick eye 
and hand and voice the proper course ; but where 
the instincts are wanting, breeding is indispensable 
to supply the deficiency. What one cannot do 
by nature he must do by drill. Sometimes it seems 
to me that vouncr crirlhood is intolerable. There 
is much delightful writing about it, — rose-buds 
and peach-blossoms and timid fawns ; but the 



GALA-DAYS. 213 

timid fawns are scarce in streets and hotels and 
schools, — or perhaps it is that the fawns who are 
not timid draw all eyes upon themselves, and make 
an impression entirely disproportionate to their 
numbers. I am thinking now, I regret to say, 
of New England young girls. Where they are 
charming, they are irresistible ; they need yield to 
nobody in the known world. But I do think that 
an uninteresting Yankee girl is the most uninter- 
esting of all created objects. Southern girls have 
almost always tender voices and soft manners. 
Arrant nonsense comes from their lips with such 
sweet syllabic flow, such little ripples of pronun- 
ciation and musical interludes, that you are at- 
tracted and held without the smallest regard to 
what they are saying. I could sit for hours and 
hear two of them chatterincr over a checker-board 
just for the pleasure of the silvery, tinkling music 
of their voices. But woe is me for the voices, male 
and female, that you so often hear in New Eng- 
land, — the harsh, strident voices, the monotonous, 
cranky, yanky, filing, rasping voices, without 
modulation, all rise and no fall, a monotonous 
discord, no soul, no feeling, and no counterfeit of 
it, loud, positive, angular, and awful. Indeed, 
I do not see how we New-Englanders are ever to 
rid ourselves of the reproach of our voices. The 
number of people who speak well is not large 
enough materially to influence the rest. Teachers 
do not teach speaking in school, — they certainly 



214 GALA-DAYS. 

did not in my day, and I have no reason to suppose 
from results that tliey do now, — and parents do 
not teach it at home, for the simple reason, I sup- 
pose, that they do not know it themselves. We 
can all perceive the discord ; but how to produce 
concord, that is the question. This one thing, 
however, is practicable : if sw^eetness cannot be 
increased, volume can be diminished, if you can- 
not make the right kind of noise, you can at least 
make as little as possible of the wrong kind. Of- 
ten the discord extends to manners. Public con- 
veyances and public places produce so many girls 
who are not gentle, retiring, shady, attractive. 
They are flingy and sharp and saucy, without being 
piquant. They take on airs without having the 
beauty or the brilliancy which alone makes airs 
delightful. They agonize to make an impression, 
and they make it, but not always in the line of 
their intent. Setting out to be picturesque, they 
become uncouth. They are ridiculous when they 
mean to be interesting, and silly when they try to 
be playful. If they would only leave off attitudi- 
nizing, one would be appeased./ It may not be pos- 
sible to acquire agreeable manners, any more than 
a pleasant voice ; but it is possible to be quiet. 
But no suspicion of defect seems ever to have 
penetrated the bosoms of such girls. They act as 
if they thought attention was admiration. Levity 
they mistake for vivacity. Peevishness is elegance. 
Boldness is dignity. Rudeness is savoir faire. 



GALA-DAYS. 215 

Boisterousness is their vulgate for youthful high 
spirits. 

And what, let me ask just here, is the meaning 
of the small waists ""hat girls are cramming their 
lives in^"o ? I thought tight-lacing was an effete 
superstition clean .gone forever. But again and 
again, last summer, I saw this wretched disease, 
this cacoethes pectus vinciendi, breaking out with 
renewed and increasing virulence ; and I heard 
women — yes, grown-up women, old women — 
talking about the " Grecian bend," and the taper 
ing line of the slender, willowy waist. Now, girls^ 
when you have laced yourselves into a wand, dt 
not be so infatuated as to suppose that any sensible 
person looks at you and thinks of willows. Not in 
the least. Probably he is wondering how you 
manage to breathe. As for the Grecian bend, 
you have been told over and over again that no 
Grecian woman, whether in the flesh or in the 
stone, ever bent such a figure, — spoiled if it was 
originally good, made worse if it was originally 
bad. You wish to be beautiful, and it is a laudable 
wish ;'/ but nothing is beautiful which is not loyal, 
truthful, natural. You need not take my simple 
word for it ; I do not believe a doctor can any- 
where be found who will say that compression is 
healthful, or a sculptor who will say that it is 
beautiful. Which now is the higher art, the sculp- 
tor's or the mantua-maker's ? Which is most 
likely to be right, the man (or the woman) who 



216 GALA-DAYS. 

devotes his life to the study of beauty and strength, 
both in essence and expression, or the woman who 
is concerned only with chpping and trimming ? 
Which do you think takes the more correct view, 
he who looks upon the human body as God's handi- 
work, a thing to be reverenced, to be studied, to 
be obeyed, or one who admires it according as it 
varies more or less from the standard of a fashion- 
plate, who considers it as entirely subordinate to 
the prevailing mode, and who hesitates at no de- 
vices to bring it down to the desired and utterly 
arbitrary dimensions ? This is what you do ; you 
give yourselves up into the hands, or you yield 
submissively to the opinions, of people^ who make 
no account whatever of the form or the functions 
of nature ; who have never made their profession 
a liberal one ; who never seem to suspect that God 
had anything to do with the human frame ; who, 
whatever station in life they occupy, have not pos- 
sessed themselves of the first principles of beauty 
and grace, while you ignore the opinions, and lay 
yourself open to the contempt, of those whose nat- 
ural endowments and wdiose laro-e and varied cul- 
ture give them the strongest claim upon" your 
deference. The woman who binds the human 
frame into such shapes as haunted the hotels last 
summer, whether she be a dressmaker or a Queen 
of Fashion, is a woman ignorant alike of the laws 
of health and beauty ; and every woman who sub- 
mits to such distortion is either ignorant or weak. 



GALA-DAYS. 217 

The body is fearfully and wonderfully and beau- 
tifully made, a glorious possession, a fair and noble 
edifice, the Temple of the Holy Ghost, beautiful 
for its symmetry, for its adaptations, for its uses ; 
and they who deform and degrade it by a fashion 
founded in ignorance, fostered by folly, and fruitful 
of woe, are w^orking a work which can be forgiven 
them only when they know^ not what they do. 

If this is not true, then I know not what truth 
is. If it is not a perfectly plain and patent truth, 
on the very face of it, then I am utterly incapable 
of distinguishing between truth and falsehood. 
Yet, if it is true, how account for the tight-lacing 
among women who are in a position to be just as 
intelligent as the doctor and the sculptor are? 

Girls, I find a great deal of fault with you, do I 
not? But I cannot help it. You have been so 
written and talked and suno; and flattered into 
a>surdity and falsehood, that there is nothing left 
bui. to stab you with short, sharp words. If I 
chide you without cause, if I censure that which is 
not censurable, if I attribute to a class that which 
belongs only to individuals, if I intimate that un- 
gentle voices, uncultivated language, and unpleas- 
ing manners are common when they are really 
uncommon, if I assume to demand more than 
every person who loves his country and believes 
in his countrv women has a rig-ht to demand, on 
me be all the blame. But for ten persons who 
will give you flattery and sneers, you will not find 

10 



218 GALA-DAYS. 

one who will tell you wholesome truths. I will 
tell you what seems to me true and wholesome. 
Poetasters and cheap sentimentalists will berhyme 
and beguile you : I cannot help it ; but I will at 
least attempt to administer the corrective of w^hat 
should be common sense. The Magister was 
forced to let Von Falterle have a hand in Albano's 
education, but he " swore to weed as much out of 
him every day as that other fellow raked in." 
Dilettanteism prattles pleasant things to you: I 
want you to be everything that is pleasant. Where 
a fulsome if not a false adulation praises your slen- 
der grace, I shall not hesitate to tell you that I 
see neither slenderness nor grace, but ribs crushed 
in, a diaphragm flattened down, liver and stomach 
and spleen and pancreas jammed out of place, out 
of shape, out of use ; and that, if you were born so, 
humanity would dictate that you should j)ad liber- 
ally, to save beholders from suffering ; but of 
malice aforethought so to contract yourselves is 
barbarism in the first deo-ree. And all the while 
I am saying these homely things, I shall have ten 
thousand times more real regard and veneration 
for you than your venders of dainty compliments. 
Regard? Jenny, Lilly, Carry, Hetty, Fanny, 
and the rest of you, dearly beloved and longed 
for, — Mary, my queen, my singing-bird, a royal 
captive, but she shall come to her crown one 
day, — my two Ellens, graceful and brilliant, — • 
and you, my sweet-mouthed, soft-eyed islander, 



GALA-DAYS. 219 

with your life deep and boundless like the sea that 
lulled you to baby-slumbers, — knowing you, shall 
I talk of regard ? Knowing you, and from you, 
all, do I not know what girls can be ? Sometimes 
it seems as if no one knows girls except me. If 
the world did but know you, if it knew what 
deeps are in you, what strength and salvation for 
the race lie dormant in your dormant powers, 
surely it would throw off the deference that masks 
contempt and give you the right hand of royal 
fellowship. 

And if, in the world just as it is, girls did but 
know themselves ! If they did but know how de- 
lightful, how noble and ennobling, how gracious 
and consoling and helpful, they might be, how 
wearied eyes might love to rest upon them, how 
sore hearts might be healed, and weak hearts 
strengthened, by the fragrance of their unfolding 
youth ! There is not one giil in a thousand, North 
or South, who might not be lovely and beloved. 
I do not reckon on a difference of race in North 
and South, as the manner of some is. The great 
mass of girls whom one meets in schools and 
public places are the ones who in the South would 
be the listless, ragged daughters of poverty. The 
great mass of Southern girls that we see are the 
cherished and cultivated upper classes, and answer 
only to our very best. Like should always be com- 
pared with like. And I am not afraid to compare 
our best, high-born or lowly, with the best of any 



220 GALA-DAYS. 

class or country. They have, besides all that is 
beautiful, a substantial substratum of sound sense, 
high principle, practical benevolence, and hidden 
resources. To behold them, they sparkle like 
diamonds. To know them, they are beneficent as 
iron. Let all the others emulate these. Let none 
be content with being intelligent. Let them de- 
termine also to be full of grace. 

Among the girls that I saw on m}^ journey who , 
did not please me, there were several who did, — 
several of whom occasional glimpses promised 
pleasant things, if only there were opportunity to 
grasp them, — and two in particular who have 
left an abiding picture in my gallery. Let me 
from pure delight linger over the portraiture. 

Two sisters taken a-pleasuring by their father, — 
the younger anywhere from fourteen to eighteen 
years old, the elder anywhere from sixteen to 
twenty ; — this tall and slender, with a modest, 
sensitive, quiet, womanly dignity ; that animated,^ 
unconscious, and entirely girlish ; — the one with 
voice low and soft, the other low and clear. The 
father was an educated and accomplished Chris- 
tian gentleman. The relations between the two 
were most interesting. His demeanor towards 
them was a charming combination of love and 
courtesy. Theirs to him was at once confiding 
and polite. Tiie best rooms, the best seats, the best 
positions, were not assumed by them or yielded to 
them with the rude tyranny on one side and mean 



GALA-DAYS. 221 

servility on the otlier which one too often sees, 
but pressed upon them with true knightly chivalry, 
and received, not carelessly as due and usual, but 
with affectionate deprecation and reluctance. Yet 
there was not the slightest affectation of affection, 
than which no affectation is more nauseous. True 
affection, undoubtedly, does often exist where its 
expression is caricatured, but the caricature is not 
less despicable. The pride of the father in his 
daughters was charming, — it was so natural, so 
fatherly, so frank, so irresistible, and never offen- 
sively exhibited. There was not a tamt of show 
or selfishness in their mutual regard. They had 
eyes and ears and ready hands for everybody. 

And they were admirable travellers. They 
never had any discomforts. They never found 
the food bad, or the beds hard, or the servants 
stupid. They never were tired when anything 
was to be done, or cross when it had been done, 
or under any circumstances peevish, or pouty, or 
" offish." They were ready for everything and 
content with anything. It was a pleasure to give 
them a pleasure, because their pleasure was so 
manifest. They looked eagerly at everything and 
into everything. The younger one, indeed, was 
so interested, that she often forgot her feet in her 
bright, observant eyes, w^iich would lead her right 
on and on, regardless of the course of others, till 
she was discovered to be missing, a search insti- 
tuted, and the wanderer returned smiling, but not 



222 GALA-DAYS. 

disconcerted. They were never restless, uneasy, 
discontented, wanting to go somewhere else, or 
stay longer when every one was ready to go, 
or annoying their friends by rushing into need- 
less danger. They never brought their personal 
tastes into conflict with the general convenience. 
They were thoroughly free from affectation. They 
never seemed to say or do anything with a view 
to the impression it would make, or even to sus- 
pect that they should make an impression. They 
were just fond enough of dress to array themselves 
with neatness, freshness, a pretty little touch of 
youthful ornament, and a very nice sense of fit- 
ness. But they were never occupied with their 
dress, and they had only as much as was necessary, 
— though that may have been a mother's care, — 
and what of them was not the result of wise pa- 
rental care ? They did not talk about gentlemen. 
They had evidently been brought up in familiar 
contact with the thing, so that no glamour hung 
about the word. They talked of places, people, 
books, flowers, all simple things, in a simple way. 
They were interested in music, in pictures, in 
what they saw and what they did. They sang 
and played with fresh, natural grace, to the delight 
and applause of all, and stopped soon enough to 
make us wish for more, but not soon enough to 
seem capricious or disobliging or pert. 

But my pen fails to picture them to you as I 
saw them, — the one with her grave, sweet, artless 



GALA-DAYS. 223 

dignity, a perfect Honoria, crowned with the soft 
glory of a dawning womanhood ; the other docile 
and sprightly, careless, but not thoughtless. The 
beauty of their characters lay in the perfect bal- 
ance. Their qualities were set off against each 
other, and symmetry was the result. They com- 
bined opposites into a fascinating harmony. They 
had all the ease and unconcern of refined associa- 
tion, without the smallest admixture of forwardness. 
They were neither bold nor bashful. They neither 
pampered nor neglected themselves, — neither 
fawned upon nor insulted others. They were 
everything that they ought to be, and nothing 
that they ought not to be, and I wished I could 
put them in a cage, and carry them through the 
country, and say : " Look, girls, this is what I 
mean. This is what I wish you to be." 

We wound around the mountains, and wan- 
dered back and forth through the defiles like the 
Israelites in the wilderness, seeing everything that 
was to be seen, and a good deal more. We alight- 
ed incessantly, and struck into little wood-paths 
after cascades and falls, and got them too, some- 
times. Of course we penetrated into the dripping 
Flume, and paddled on the Pool, or the Basin, — 
I have forgotten which they call it, — for a pool 
is but a big basin, and a basin a small pool. Of 
course we sailed and shouted on Echo Lake, and 
did obeisance to the Old Man of the Mountains 
and his numerous and nondescript progeny ; foi 



224 GALA-DAYS. 

he has played pranks up there, and infected the 
whole surrounding country with a furor of per- 
sonality. The Old Man himself I acknowledged. 
That great stone face is clearly and calmly pro- 
filed against the sky. His knee, too, is susceptible 
of proof, for I climbed it. A white horse in the 
vicinity of Conway is visible to the imaginative 
eye, and, by a little forcing of vision and con- 
science, one can make out a turtle, all but the 
head and legs. But there is a limit to all things, 
and when Halicarnassus held up both hands in 
astonishment and admiration, and declared that 
he saw a kangaroo, and then, in short and rapid 
succession, a rhinoceros, an armadillo, and a 
crocodile, I felt, in the words of General Banks, 
" We have now reached that limit," and shut down 
the gates upon credulity. 

At a little villao;e amoncr the mountains we me* 
our friends, and stopped a week or two, loath to 
leave the charmed spot. "Where?" Nevermind. 
A place where the sun shines, and lavender-hued 
clouds whirl in craggy, defiant, thunderous masses 
around imperturbable mountain-tops ;. and vapors, 
pearly and amber-tinted, have not forgotten to float 
softly among the valleys ; and evening skies fling 
out their pink and purple banner ; and stars throb, 
and glow, and flash, with a radiant life that is not 
of the earth ; — where great rivers have not yet put 
on the majesty of manhood, but trill over pebbles, 
curl around rocks, ripple against baiiks, waltz little 



GALA-DAYS. 225 

eddies, spread dainty pools for gay little trout, dash 
up saucy spray into the eyes of bending ferns, mock 
the frantic struggles of lost flowers and twigs, tan- 
talizing them with hope of a rest that never comes, 
and leap headlong, swirling and singing with a 
thousand silver tongues, down cranny and ravine 
in all the wild winsomeness of unchecked youth ; 

— a land flowing with maple-molasses and sugar, 
and cider apple-sauce, and cheese new and old, 
and baked beans, and three sermons on Sundays, 
besides Sabbath school at noon, and no time to go 
home; and wagons with three seats, \^Mem. A1-) 
ways choose the back seat, if you wish to secure 
a reputation for amiability,] three on a seat, two 
horses, and a colt trotting gravely beside his moth- 
er ; roads all sand in the hollows and all ruts on 
the hills, blocked up by snow in the winter, and 
washed away by thunder-showers in the summer ; 

— a land where carpets are disdained, latches are 
of wood, thieves unknown, wainscots and wells au 
naturel, women are as busy as bees all day and knit 
in the chinks, men are invisible till evening, girls 
braid hats and have beaux, and everybody goes to 
bed and to sleep at nine o'clock, and gets up nobody 
knows when, and cooks, eats, and " clears away " 
breakfast before other people have fairly rubbed 
their eyes open ; where all the town are neighbors 
for ten miles round, and know your outgoings and 
incomings without impertinence, gossip without a 
sting, are intelligent without pretension, sturdy 

10* o 



226 GALA-DAYS. 

Tvithout rudeness, honest without effort, and cher- 
ish an orthodoxy true as steel, straight as a pine, 
unimpeachable in quality, and unlimited in quan- 
tity. God bless them ! Late may they return to 
heaven, and never wai^t a man to stand before the 
Lord forever! 

Some people have conscientious scruples about 
jSshing. I respect them. I had them once my- 
self. Wantonly to destroy, for mere sport, the 
innocent life, in lake and river, seemed to me a 
cruelty and a shame. But people must fish. Now, 
then, how shall your theory and practice be har- 
monized ? Practice can't yield. Plainly, theory 
must. A year ago, I went out on a rock in the 
Atlantic Ocean, held a line — just to see how it 
seemed, — and caught eight fishes ; and every time 
a fish came up, a scruple went down. They 
were n't very large, — the fishes, I mean, not the 
scruples, though the same adjective might, per- 
haps, not unjustly be applied to both, — and I 
don't know that the enormity of the sin depends 
at all upon the size of the fish ; but if it did, so 
entirely had my success convinced me of man's 
lawful dominion over the fish of the sea, that I 
verily believe, if a whale had hooked himself on 
the end of my line, I should have hauled him up 
without a pang. 

I do not msist that you shall accept my system 
of ethics. Deplorable results might follow its prac- 
tical application in every imaginable case. I sim- 



GALA-DAYS. 227 

ply state facts, leaving the " thoughtful reader " to 
generalize from them whatever code he pleases. 

Which facts will partially account for the eager- 
ness with which I, one morning, seconded a pro- 
posal to go a-fishing in a river about fourteen miles 
away. One wanted the scenery, another the 
drive, a third a chowder, and so on ; but I — I 
may as well confess — wanted the excitement, the 
fishes, the opportunity of displaying my piscatory 
prowess. I enjoyed in anticipation the masculine 
admiration and feminine chagrin that would ac- 
company the beautiful, fat, shining, speckled, pris- 
matic trout into my basket, while other rods waited 
in vain for a " nibble." I resolved to be mas;- 
nanimous. Modesty should lend to genius a 
heiglitened charm. I would win hearts by my 
humility, as well as laurels by my dexterity. I 
would disclaim superior skill, attribute success to 
fortune, and offer to distribute my spoil among the 
discomfited. Glory, not pelf, was my object. You 
may imagine my disgust on finding, at the end of 
our journey, that there was only one rod for the 
whole party. Plenty of lines, but no rods. What 
was to be done ? It was proposed to improvise rods 
from the trees. "No," said the female element. 
" We don't care. We should n't catch any fish. 
We 'd just as soon stroll about." I bubbled up, if 
I didn't boll over. " TFe shouldn't, should we? 
Pray, speak for yourselves ! Did n't I catch eight 
cod-fishes in the Atlantic Ocean, last summer ? 



228 GALA-DAYS. 

Answer me that ! " I was indignant that they 
should so easily be turned away, by the trivial 
circumstance of there being no rods, from the noble 
art of fishing. My spirits rose to the height of the 
emergency. The story of my exploits makes an 
impression. There is a marked respect in the tone 
of their reply. " Let there be no division among 
us. Go you to the stream, O Nimrod of the waters, 
since you alone have the prestige of success. We 
will wander quietly in the woods, build a fire, fry 
the potatoes, and await your return with the fish.'* 
They go to the woods. I hang my prospective 
trout on my retrospective cod, and march river- 
ward. Halicarnassus, according to the old saw, 
" leaves this world, and climbs a tree," and, with 
jackknife, cord, and perseverance, manufactures a 
fishing-rod, which he courteously offers to me, 
wliich I succinctly decline, informing him in no 
ambiguous phrase that I consider nothing beneath 
the best as sood enouo;h for me. Halicarnassus is 
convinced by my logic, overpowered by my rhet- 
oric, and meekly yields up the best rod, though 
the natural man rebels. The bank of the river is 
rocky, steep, shrubby, and difficult of ascent or 
descent. Halicarnassus bids me tarry on the bridge, 
while he descends to reconnoitre. I am acquies- 
cent, and lean over the raihng awaiting the result 
of investigation. Halicarnassus picks his way over 
the rocks, sidewise and zigzaggy along the bank, 
and down the river, in search of fish. I grow tired 



GALA-DAYS. 229 

of playing Casabianca, and steal behind the bridge, 
and pick my way over the rocks, sidewise and zig- 
zaggy along the bank, and up the river, in search 
of " fun " ; practise irregular and indescribable 
gymnastics with variable success for half an hour 
or so. Shout from the bridge. I look up. Too 
far off to hear the words, but see Halicarnassus 
gesticulating furiously, and evidently laboring un- 
der great excitement. Retrograde as rapidly as cir- 
cumstances will permit. Halicarnassus makes a 
speaking-trum]^)et of his hands, and roars, " I 've 
FOUND — a FISH ! Left — him for — you — to 
catch! Come quick!" — and, plunging headlong 
down the bank, disappears. I am touched to the 
heart by this sublime instance of self-denial and 
devotion, and scramble up to the bridge, and 
p mge down after him. Heel of boot gets en- 
tangled in dress every third step, — fishing-line in 
tree-top every second ; progress consequently not 
so rapid as could be desired. Reach the water at 
last. Step cautiously from rock to rock to the 
middle of the stream, — balance on a pebble just 
large enough to plant both feet on, and just firm 
enough to make it worth while to run the risk, — 
drop my line into the spot designated, — a quiet, 
black little pool in the rushing river, — see no fish, 
but have faith in Halicarnassus. 

" Bite ? " asks Halicarnassus, eagerly. 

"Not yet," I answer, sweetly. Breathless ex- 
pectation. Lips compressed. Eyes fixed. Five 
minutes gone. 



230 GALA-DAYS. 

"Bite?" calls Halicarnassus, from down the 
river. 

" Not yet," hopefully. 

" Lower your line a little. I '11 come in a 
minute." Line is lowered. Arms begin to ache. 
Rod suddenly bobs down. Snatch it up. Only 
an old stick. Splash it off contemptuously. 

" Bite ? " calls Halicarnassus from afar. 

" No," faintly responds Marius, amid the ruins 
of Carthage. 

"Perhaps he will by and by," suggests Hali- 
carnassus, encouragingly. Five minutes more. 
Arms breaking. Knees trembling. Pebble shaky. 
Brain dizzy. Everytliing seems to be saihng down 
the stream. Tempted to give up, but look at the 
empty basket, think of the expectant party and the 
eight cod-fish, and possess my soul in patience. 

" Bite ? " comes the distant voice of Halicar- 
nassus, disappearing by a bend in the river. 

" No ! " I moan, trying to stand on one foot to 
rest the other, and ending by standing on neithei^ ; 
for the pebble quivers, convulses, and finally rolls 
over and expires ; and only a vigorous leap and a 
sudden conversion of the fishing-rod into a bal- 
ancing-pole save me from an ignominious bath. 
Weary of the world, and lost to shame, I gather 
all my remaining strength, wind the line about the 
rod, poise it on high, hurl it out into the deepest 
and most unobstructed part of the stream, climb 
up pu(/nis et calcihus on the back of an old boulder ; 



GALA-DAYS. 281 

coax, threaten, cajole, and intimidate my wet boots 
to come off; dip my handkerchief in tlie water, 
and fold it on my head, to keep from being sun- 
struck ; lie down on the rock, pull my hat over 
my face, and dream, to the purling of the river, 
the singing of the birds, and the music of the wind 
in the trees, (whether in the body I cannot tell, 
or whether out of the body I cannot tell,) of 
another river, far, far away, — broad, and deep, 
and seaward rushing, — now in shadow, now in 
shine, — now lashed by storm, now calm as a 
baby's sleep, — bearing on its vast bosom a million 
crafts, whereof I see only one^ — a little pinnace, 
frail yet buoyant, — tossed hither and thither, yet 
always keeping her prow to the waves, — washed, 
but not whelmed. So small and slight a thing, 
will she not be borne down by the merchant-ships, 
the ocean steamers, the men-of-war, that ride the 
waves, reckless in their pride of power? How 
will she escape the sunken rocks, the treacherous 
quicksands, the ravening whirlpools, the black and 
dark night ? Lo ! yonder, right across her bows, 
comes one of the Sea-Kings, freighted with death 
for the frail little bark ! Woe ! woe ! for the lithe 
little bark ! Nay, not death, but life. The Sea- 
King marks the path of the pinnace. Not death, 
but life. Signals flash back and forth. She dis- 
j cerns the voice of the Master. He, too, is steering 
seaward, — not more bravely, not more truly, but 
in a directer course. He will pilot her past the 



232 GALA-DAYS. 

breakers and the quicksands. He will bring her 
to the haven where she would be. O brave little 
bark ! Is it Love that watches at the masthead ? 
Is it Wisdom that stands at the helm? Is it 
Strength that curves the swift keel? 

" Hullo ! how many ? " 

I start up wildly, and knock my hat off into the 
water. Jump after it, at the imminent risk of 
going in myself, catch it by one of the strings, and 
stare at Hahcarnassus. 

" Asleep, I fancy ? " says Hahcarnassus, inter- 
rogatively. 

" Fancy," I echo, dreamily. 

" How many fishes ? " persists Hahcarnassus. 

" Fishes ? " says the echo. 

" Yes, fishes," repeats Hahcarnassus, in a louder 
tone. 

*' Yes, it must have been the fishes," murmurs 
the echo. 

'' Goodness gracious me ! " ejaculates Hahcar- 
nassus, with the voice of a giant ; "how many 
fishes have you caught?" 

" Oh ! yes," waking up and hastening to ap- 
pease his wrath; "eight, — chiefly cod." 

Indignation chokes his speech. Meanwhile I 
wake up still further, and, instead of standing 
before him like a culprit, beard him like an 
avenging Fury, and upbraid him with his decep- ^ 
tion and desertion. He attempts to defend him- 
self, but is overpowered. Conscious guilt dyes 



GALA-DAYS. 233 

his face, and remorse gnaws at the roots of his 
tonoTie. 

" Sinful heart makes feeble hand." 

We walk silently tow^ards the woods. We meet 
a small boy with a tin pan and thirty-six fishes in 
it. We accost him. 

" Are these fishes for sale ? " asks Halicarnassus. 

" Bet they be ! " says small boy, with energy. 

Halicarnassus looks meaningly at me. I look 
meaningly at Halicarnassus, and both look mean- 
ingly at our empty basket. 

" Won't you tell ? " says Halicarnassus. 

*' No ; won't you ? " Halicarnassus whistles, the 
fishes are transferred from pan io basket, and we 
walk away as " chirp as a cricket," reach the syl- 
van party, and are speedily surrounded. 

" O what beauties ! Who caught them ? How 
many are there ? " 

" Thirty-six," says Halicarnassus, in a lordly, 
thoroughbred way. " I cauglit 'em." 

" In a tin pan," I exclaim, disgusted with his 
self-conceit, and determined to " take him down." 

A cry of rage from Halicarnassus, a shout of 
derision from the party. 

" And how many did you catch, pray ? " de- 
mands he. 

"Eight, — all cods," I answer, placidly. 

Tolerably satisfied with our aquatic experience, 
we determined to resume the mountains, but in a 
milder form ; before which, however, it became 



234 GALA-DAYS. 

necessary to do a little shopping. An individual 
— one "of the party, whose name I will not di- 
vulge, and whose identity you never can conjec- 
ture, so it is n't worth while to exhaust yourself 
with guessing — found one day, while she was in 
the country, that she had walked a hole through 
the bottom of her boots. How she discovered this 
fact is of no moment ; but, upon investigating the 
subject, she ascertained that it could scarcely be 
said with propriety that there was a hole in her 
boots, but, to use a term which savors of the street, 
though I employ it literally, there was nH anything 
else. Now the fact of itself is not worthy of re- 
mark. That thf^ integrity of a pair of boots should 
yield to the continued solicitations of time, toil, 
bone, and muscle, is too nearly a matter of every- 
day occurrence to excite alarm. The " irrepressi- 
ble conflict " between leather and land has, so far 
as I know, been suspended but once since 

" Adam delved and Eve span," 

and that was only an amnesty of forty years while 
the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness. 
But when you are deep in the heart of the coun- 
try, scouring woods, climbing mountains, and ford- 
ing rivers, having with your usual improvidence 
neglected to furnish yourself with stout boots, then 
a " horrid chasm," or series of chasms, yawning 
in the only pair that are of any use to you, pre- 
sents a spectacle which no reflective mind can 
contemplate without dismay. 



^ GALA-BAYS. 235 

It was, in fact, with a good deal of dismay that 
the individual in question sat down, one morning, 
on "Webster's Unabridged," — that being the only- 
available seat in an apartment not over-capacious, 
— and went into a committee of the whole on the 
state of her boots. The prospect was not inviting. 
Heels frightfully wrenched and askew, and show- 
ing indubitable symptoms of a precipitate seces- 
sion ; binding frayed, ravelled, evidently stub- 
born in resistance, but at length overpowered 
and rent into innumerable fissures ; buttons dis- 
located, dragged up by the roots, yet clinging to a 
forlorn hope with a courage and constancy worthy 
of a better cause ; upper-leather (glove-kid), once 
black, now " the ashen hue of age," gray, purple, 
flayed, scratched, and generally lacerated ; soles, 
ah ! the soles ! There the process of disintegra- 
tion culminated. Curled, crisped, jagged, gaping, 
stratified, laminated, torn by internal convulsions, 
upheaved by external forces, they might have be- 
longed to some pre-Adamic era, and certainly 
presented a series of dissolving views, deeply in- 
teresting, but not, it must be confessed, highly 
entertainincT. 

After arranging these boots in every possible 
combination, — side by side, heel to heel, toe to 
toe, — and finding that the result of each and 
every combination was that 

" No light, but rather darkness visible, 
Served only to discover sights of woe," 



236 GALA-DAYS. , 

the Individual at length, with a sigh, placed them, 
keel upwards, on the floor in front of her, and, 
resting her head in her hands, gazed at them with 
such a fixedness and rigidity that she might have 
been taken for an old Ouate, absorbed in the exer- 
cise of his legitimate calhng. (The old Druidical 
order were divided into three classes, Druids, 
'Bards, and Ouates. The Druids philosophized 
and theologized, the Bards harped and sang, and 
the Ouates divined and contemplated the nature 
of things. I thought I would tell you, as you 
mio-ht not know. I execrate the self-conceited 
way some people have of tossing off their erudite 
items and allusions in a careless, familiar style, as 
if it is such A B C to them that they don't for a 
moment think of any one's not understanding it. 
Worse still is it to have some jagged brickbat, dug 
up from a heap of Patagonian rubbish, flung at you 
with a "we have all heard of"; or to be turned 
off, just as your ears are wide open to listen to an 

old pre-Thautic myth, with "the story of is 

too familiar to need repetition." You have not 
the most distant conception what the story is, yet 
you don't like to say so, because it seems to be in- 
timated that every intelhgent person ought to 
know it ; so you hold your peace. My dear, 
don't do it. Don't hold your peace. Don't let 
yourself be put down in that way. Don't be de- 
ceived. Half the time these people never knew it 
themselves, I dare say, more than a week before- 



GALA-DAYS. 237 

hand, and have been puzzhng their brams ever, 
since for a chance to get it hi.) 

The Individual came at length to the conclusion 
tliat something must be done. Masterly inactiv- 
ity must give way to the exigencies of the case. 
She had recourse to the " oldest inhabitant." A 
series of questions disclosed the important fact 
that — 

" Well, there was a store at Sonose, about 
fourteen miles away; and Mr. Williams, he kept 
candy, and slate-pencils, and sich — " 

" Do you suppose he keeps good thick boots ? " 

" O la ! no." 

" Do you suppose he keeps any kind of boots ? 
You see I have worn mine out, and what am I 
to do?" 

" Well, now, I thinks likely you can get 'em 
mended." 

Individual brightens up. " O, do you ? " 

" Yes, there 's Mr. Jacobs, lives right out there, 
under the hill ; he makes men's boots. I do' 
Know as he could do yours, but you might try. 
Thinks likely he ain't got the tools, nor the stuff 
to do that sort of work with." 

I did n't care for the tools or the stuff. All I 
wanted was the shoemaker ; if I could find him, 

had little doubt that all the rest would follow 
naturally from the premises. So I arranged my 
" sandal shoon and scallop-shell," and departed on 
my pilgrimage. The way had been carefully 



238 GALA-DAYS. 

pointed" out to me, but I never can remember such 
things more than one turn, or street, ahead ; so I 
made a point of inquiring of every one I met, 
where Mr. Jacobs hved. Every one, by the 
way, consisted of a little girl with a basket of 
potatoes, and a man carrying the United States 
mail on his arm. 

At length the Individual found the house as 
directed, and found also that it was no house, but 
a barn, and the shoemaker's shop was up-stairs, 
and the stairs were on the outside. If they were 
firm and strong, their looks were against them. 
Neither step nor balustrade invited confidence. 
The Individual stood on the lower one in a medi- 
tative mood for a while, and then gave a jump 
by way of test, thinking it best to go through the 
one nearest the ground, if she must go through 
any. An ominous creaking and swaying and crack- 
ing followed, but no actual rupture. The second 
step was tested with the same result ; then the 
third and fourth ; and, reflecting that appearances 
are deceitful, and recollecting the rocking-stone 
at Gloucester, IVIassachusetts, and the tower of 
Pisa, &c., the Individual shook off* her fears, and 
ascended rapidly. Being somewhat unfamiliar 
with the etiquette of shoemaker's shops, she hesi- 
tated whether to knock or plunge at once into the 
middle of things, but decided to err on the safe 
side, and gave a very moderate and conservative 
rap. Silence. A louder knock. The door rattled. 



GALA-DAYS. 239 

'{Louder still. The whole buiMing shook. Knuc- 
kles filed a caveat. Applied the lieel of the dilapi- 
dated boot in her hand. Suflfocated with a cloud of 
dust thence ensuing. Contemplated the nature of 
things for a while. Heard a voice. A man called 
from a neighboring turnip-field, " Arter Jake ? " 

"Yes, sir, — if he is a shoemaker" (to make 
sure of identity). 

" Yes, well, he ain't to home." 

" Oh." 

" He 's gone to Sonose." 

" When will he be back, if you please ? " 

" Wall, I can't say for sarts^in. Next week or 
week after, — leastwise 'fore the ikir. Got a job? " 

" Yes, sir, but I can't very well wait so long. 
Do you know of any shoemakers anywhere 
about?" 

" Wall, ma'am, I do' know as I do. Folks is 
mostly farmers here. There 's Fuller, just moved, 
though. Come up from Exton yesterday. P'r'aps 
he '11 give you a lift. That 's his house right down 
there. 'T aint more 'n half a mile." 

" Yes, sir, I see it. Thank you." 

Individual descends from her precarious eleva- 
tion, and marches to the attack of Fuller. A 
ft-esh-faced, good-natured-looking man is just com- 
ing out at the gate. His pleasant countenance 
captivates her at once, and, with a silent but 
intense hope that he may be the shoemaker, she 
asks if " Mr. Fuller fives here." 



240 GALA-DAYS. 

" Well," replies the man, in an easy, drawling 
tone, that harmonizes admirably with his face- 
" when a fellow is moving, he can't be said to livo 
anywhere. I guess he '11 live here, though, as 
soon as the stove gets up." 

I reciprocated his frankness with an engaging 
smile, and asked, in a confidential tone, " Do you 
suppose he would mend a shoe for me ? " 

I thought I would begin with a shoe, and, if I 
found him acquiescent, I would mount gradually 
to a boot, then to a pair. But my little subterfuge 
was water spilled on the ground. 

" I don't know whether he would or not, but I 
know one thing." 

"Well?" 

" Could n't if he wanted to. Ain't got his tools 
here. They ain't come up yet." 

"Oh! is that all?" 

"J./Z.?" 

" Yes ; because, if you know how, I should n't 
think it would make so much difference about the 
tools. Could n't you borrow a gimlet or some- 
thing from the neighbors ? " 

" A GIMLET ? " 

" Yes, or whatever you want, to make shoes 
with." 

" An awl, you mean." 

" Well, yes, an awl. Could n't you borrow an 
awl?" 

"Nary awl." 



GALA-DAYS. 241 

' ^' When will your tools come ? " 
• " Well, I don't know ; you see I don't hurry 
'em u'p, because it 's haying, and I and my men, 
we 'd just as lieves work out of doors a part of the 
time as not. We don't mend shoes much. We 
make 'em mostly." 

*' Oh ! that 's better still ; would you make me 
a pair?" 

" Well, we don't do that kind of work. . We 
work for the dealers. We make the shoes that 
they send down South for the niggers. We ain't 
got the lasts that would do for you." 

Individual goes home, as ^ Chaucer says, " in 
doleful dumps," and determines to take the boots 
under her own supervision. First, she inks over 
all the gray parts. Then she takes some sealing- 
wax, and sticks down all the bits of cuticle torn 
up. Then, in lieu of anything better, she takes 
some white flannel-silk, — not embroidery-silk, you 
understand, but flannel-silk, harder twisted and 
stronger, such as is to be found, so far as I have 
tried, only in Boston, — and therewith endeavors to 
sew down the curled sole to its appropriate sphere, 
or rather plane. It is not the easiest or the 
most agreeable work in the world. How peo- 
ple manage to mak^ shoes I cannot divine, for of 
all awkward things to get hold of, and to handle 
and manage after you have hold, I think a shoe 
is the worst. The place where you put a needle 
in does not seem to hold the most distant relation 
11 • p 



242 GALA-DAYS. 

to the place where It comes out. You set it where 
you wish it to go, and then proceed vi et armis ei 
thimble, but it resists your armed intervention. 
Then you rest the head of the needle against the 
window-sill, and push. You feel something move. 
Everything is going on and in delightfully. Mind 
asserts its control over matter. You pause to ex- 
amine. In ? Yes, head deep in the pine-wood, but 
the point not an inch further in the shoe. You 
pull out. The shoe comes off the needle, but the 
needle does not come out of the window-sill. You 
pull the silk, and break it, and then work the nee- 
dle out as well as you can, and then begin again, 

— destroying three needles, getting your fingers 
" exquisitely pricked," and keeping your temper 

— if you can. 

By some such process did the Individual, a pas- 
sage of whose biography I am now giving you, 
endeavor to repair the ravages of time and toil. 
In so far as she succeeded in making the crooked 
places straight and the rough places plain, her 
efforts may be said to have been crowned with 
success. It is but fair to add, however, that the 
result did not inspire her with so much confidence 
but that she determined to lay by the boots for a 
while, reserving them for siich times as they 
should be most needed, with a vague hope also 
that rest might exercise some wonderful recupera- 
tive power. 

About five days after this, they were again 



GALA-DAYS. 243 

(brouglit 'out, to do duty on a long walk. The 
event was most mournful. The flannel-silk oraA^e 
way at the first fire. The soles rolled themselves 
tip again in a most uncomfortable manner. At 
every step, the foot had to be put forward, placed 
lightly on the ground, and then drawn back. 
The w^alk was an agony. It so happened that on 
our return, without any intention, we came out of 
the w^oods in the immediate vicinity of the shoe- 
maker's aforesaid, and the Indivickial was quite 
sure she heard the sound of his hammer. She 
remembered that, when she was young and at 
school, she w^as famihar with a certain " ward- 
robe," which was generally so bulging-full of 
clothes, that the doors could not, by any fair, 
straightforward means, be shut ; but if you sprang 
upon them suddenly, taking them unawares, as it 
were, and when they were off their guard, you 
could sometimes effect a closure. She determined 
to try this plan on the shoemaker. So she bade 
the rest of the party go on, while she turned oflP 
in the direction of the hammering. She went 
straight into the shop, without knocking, the door 
being ajar. There he was at it, sure enough. 

" Your tools have come ! " she exclaimed, with 
ill-concealed exultation. " Now, will you mend 
my shoes ? " 

" Well, I don't know as I can, hardly. I 'm 
pretty much in a hurry. What with moving and 
haying, I 've got a little behindhand." 



244 GALA-DA YS. 

" Oh ! but you must mend them, because I am < 
going up on the mountain to-morrow, and I have 
no others to wear, and I am afraid of the snakes : 
so you see, you must." * '^ 

" Got 'em here ? " 

Individual furtively w^orks off the best one, and 
;Dicks it up, — while his eyes are bent on his work, 
— as if she had only dropped it, and hands it to 
liim. He takes it, turns it over, pulls it, knocks 
it, with an evident intention of understanding the 
subject thoroughly. 

" Kather a haggard-looking boot," he remarks, 
after his close survey. 

"Yes, but — " 

" Other a'n't so bad, I suppose ? " 

" Well — I — don't know — that is — " 

" Both bad enough." 

" Yes, indeed," with an uneasy laugh. 

" Let 's see the other one." The other one is 
produced, and examined in silence. 

" Are you going to wear them boots up the 
mountain ? " with a tone that said very plainly, 
" Of course you 're not." 

" Why, yes, I was going to wear them. Don't 
you think they will do ? " 

" I would n't trust my feet in 'em." 

" O — h ! Are there snakes ? Do you think 
snakes could bite through them ? " 

A shake of the head, and a little, low, plaintive 
whistle, is the only reply, but they speak in thun- 



GALA-DAYS. 245 

der tones of boa-constrictors, anacondas, and cobra 
di capellos. 

" They were very good and stout when I had 
txiem. I called them very stout shoes." 

'^' O yes, they 're made of good material, but 
you see they 're worn out. I don't believe I could 
mend them worth while. The stitches would tear 
right out." 

" But could n't you, somehow, glue on a pair 
of soles ? any way to make them stick. I '11 pay 
you anything, if you '11 only make them last till I 
go home, or even till I get down the mountain. 
Now, I am sure you can do it, if you will only 
think so. Don't you know Kossuth says, ' Noth- 
ing is difficult to him w^ho wills ' ? " 

He was evidently moved by the earnestness of 
the appeal. " I suppose they 'd be worth more to 
you now than half a dozen pair when you get 
home." 

" Worth ! why, they would be of inestimable 
value. Think of the snakes ! I don't care how 
you do them, nor how you make them look. 
If you will only glue on, or sew on, or nail on, or 
rivet on, something that is thick and will stick, I 
will pay you, and be grateful to you through the 
remainder of my natural life." 

" Well, — you leave 'em, and come over again 
this afternoon, and if I can do anything, I '11 do it 
by that time." 

" Oh ! I am so much obliged to vou " ; and I 



246 GALA-DAYS. 

went away in high spirits, just putting my head 
back through the door to say, " Now you perse- 
vere, and I am sure you will succeed." 

I was as bappy as a queen. To be sure. 1 
had to walk home without any shoes ; but the 
grass was as soft as velvet, and the dust as clean 
as sand, and it did not hurt me in the least. To 
be sure, he had not promised to mend ihem ; but 
I had faith in him, and how did it turn out? 
Verily, I should not have known the boots, if I 
had seen only the soles. They were clipped, and 
shaved, and underpinned, and smoothed, and looked 
as if they had taken out " a new lease of life." 

" I don't suppose they will last you as long as I 
have been doing them," he remarked, with unpro- 
fessional frankness. I did not believe him, and in- 
deed his prophecy was not true, for they are in 
existence yet, and I never disposed of " a quarter " 
in my life with more satisfaction than I dropped it 
that day into his benevolent hand. 

A thousand years hence, when New Hampshire 
shall have become as populous as Babylon, this 
sketch may become the foundation of some " Tale 
of Beowulf" or other. At any rate here it is 
ready. 

Of all the White Mountains, the one of which 
you hear least said is Agamenticus, and perhaps 
justly, for it is not one of the White Mountains, 
but an isolated peak by itself. My information 



GALA-DA YS. . 2^ 

concerning it is founded partly on observation, 
partly on testimony, and partly on memory, sup- 
ported where she is weak by conjecture. These 
three sources, however, mingle their waters to- 
gether somewhat too intricately for accurate analy- 
sis, and I shall, therefore, waive distinctions, and 
plant myself on the broad basis of assertion, 
warning the future historian and antiquary not 
to take this -paper as conclusive without extra- 
neous props. 

Agamenticus is a huge rock rising abruptly from 
a level country along New Hampshire's half-yard 
of sea-shore. As it is the only large rock on the 
eastern coast of the Un^'ted States, it is an invalua- 
ble beacon to mariners. The first city e^er built 
on the American continent was laid out at its base, 
and the remains are now visible from its summit ; 
but, as funds failed, and the founders were killed 
by the Indians, it was never completed, in fact 
was never begun, only laid out. To the east I 
was certain I saw Boar's Head and a steamer 
steaming towards it, till I was assured that in 
such case the steamer must have been steamino; 
over the corn-fields, because, unlike ^non near 
to Salim, there was no water there. So I suppose 
it uRist have been 

" A painted ship upon a painted ocean." 

The ascent to Agamenticus is sidling and un- 
certain so long as you hug your carriage ; but, 



^ 



^ 



dt8. GALA-DAYS. 

leaving that, and confiding yourself to Mother 
Earth, you gather both strength and equipoise 
from the touch, and, with a Httle boy to guide 
you through the woods and over the rocks, you 
will find the ascent quite pleasant and safe, if 
you are careful not to slip down, which you will 
be sure to do on your descent, whether you are 
careful or not. At the summit of the mountain 
is a fine and flourishing growth of muskmelons, 
sugar, and currant- wine. At least we found them 
there in profusion. 

Agamenticus has its legend. Many years ago, 
the Indians, to avert the plague, drove twenty 
tl;ipusand cattle to the top of the mountain, and 
there sacrificed them to the Great Spirit. We 
could still discern traces of the sacrifice, — burnt 
stones, bits of green-black glass, and charred pine 
branches. Then we came home. 

Perthes says, " That part of a journey which re- 
mains after the travelling is the journey." What 
remains of my journey, for me, for you? Will 
any live over again a pleasant past and look more 
cheerily into a lowering future for these wayward 
words of mine ? Are there clouded lives that will 
find a little sunshine ; pent-up souls that will catch 
a breath of blooms in my rambling record ? Are 
there lips that will relax their tightness ; eyes that 
will lose for a moment the shadow of remembered 
pain ? Then, indeed, the best part of my journey 
is yet to come. 



A Call 
TO MY Countrywomen. 



<»!l<3> 



^ 



11=^^ 




ALL TO MY 



lOUNTRYWOMEN, 




N the newspapers and magazines you 
shall see many poems and papers — 
written by women who meekly terai 
themselves weak, and modestly profess 
to represent only the weak among their sex — 
discussing the duties which the weak owe to their 
'country in days like these. The invariable con- 
clusion is, that, though they cannot fight, because 
they are not men, — or go down to nurse the sick 
and wounded, because they have children to take 
care of, — or write effectively, because they do 
not know how, — or do any great and heroic 
tiling, because they have not the ability, — t\\ej 
can pray ; and they generally do close with a 
melodious and beautiful prayer. Now praying is 
a good thing. It is, in fact, the very best thing 
in the world to do, and there is no danger of our 
having too much of it ; but if women, weak or 
strong, consider that praying is all they can or 
ought to do for their country, and so settle down 



252 A CALL TO 

contented with that, they make as great a mistake 
as if they did not pray at all. True, women can- 
not fight, and there is no call for any great number 
of female nurses ; notwithstanding this, the issue 
of this war depends quite as much upon American 
women as upon American men, — and depends, 
too, not upon the few who write, but upon the 
many who do not. The women of the Revolu- 
tion were not only Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Reed, and 
Mrs. Schuyler, but the wives of the farmers and 
shoemakers and blacksmiths everywhere. It is not 
Mrs. Stowe, or Mrs. Howe, or Miss Stevenson, or 
Miss Dix, alone, who is to save the country, but 
the thousands upon thousands who are at this mo- 
ment darning stockings, tending babies, sweeping 
floors. It is to them I speak. It is they whom 
I wish to get hold of; for in their hands lies 
slumberino; the future of this nation. 

Shall I say that the women of to-day have not 
come up to the level of to-day, — that they do not 
stand abreast with its issues, — they do not rise to 
the height of its great argument ? I do not forget 
wljat you have done. I have beheld, O Dorcases, 
with admiration and gratitude, the coats and gar- 
ments, the lint and bandages, which you have 
made. If you could have finished the war with 
your needles, it would have been finished long ago ; 
but stitching does not crush rebellion, does not an- 
nihilate treason, or hew traitors in pieces before the 
Lord. Excellent as far as it goes, it stops fearfully 



MY COUNTRYWOMEN. 253 

short of the goal. This ought ye to do, but there 
are other things which you ought not to leave 
undone. The war cannot be finished by sheets 
and pillow-cases. Sometimes I am tempted to 
believe that it cannot be finished till we have 
flung them all away. When I read of the rebels 
fighting bare-headed, bare-footed, haggard, and 
unshorn, in rags and filth, — fighting bravely, he- 
roically, successfully, — I am ready to make a 
burnt-offering of our stacks of clothing. I feel 
and fear that we must come down, as they have 
done, to a recklessness of all incidentals, down to 
the rough and rugged fastnesses of life, down to 
the very gates of death itself, before we shall be 
ready and worthy to win victories. Yet it is not 
so, for the hardest fights the earth has ever known 
have been made by the delicate-handed and purple- 
robed. So, in the ultimate analysis, it is neither 
gold-lace nor rags that overpower obstacles, but 
the fiery soul that consumes both in the intensity 
of its furnace-heat, bending impossibilities to the 
ends of its passionate purpose. 

This soul of fire is what I wish to see kindled 
in our women, — burning white and strong and 
steady, through all weakness, timidity, vacillation, 
treachery in church or state or press or parlor, 
scorching, blasting, annihilating whatsoever loveth 
and maketh a lie, — extinguished by no tempest 
of defeat, no drizzle of delay, but glowing on its 
steadfast path till it shall have cleared through the 



254 A CALL TO 

abomination of our desolation a highway for the 
Prince of Peace. 

O my countrywomen, I long to see you stand 
under the time and bear it up in your strong 
hearts, and not need to be borne up through it. 
I wish you to stimulate, and not crave stimulants 
from others. I wish you to be the consolers, the 
encouragers, the sustainers, and not tremble in 
perpetual need of consolation and encouragement. 
When men's brains are knotted and their brows 
corrugated with fearful looking for and hearing 
of financial crises, military disasters, and any and 
every form of national calamity consequent upon 
the war, come you out to meet them, serene and 
smiling and unafraid. And let your smile be no 
formal distortion of your lips, but a bright ray 
from the sunshine in your heart. Take not ac- 
quiescently, but joyfully, the spoiling of your 
goods. Not only look poverty in the face with 
high disdain, but embrace it with gladness and 
welcome. The loss is but for a moment ; the 
gain is for all time. Go further than this. Con- 
secrate to a holy cause not only the incidentals of 
life, but life itself. Father, husband, child, — I do 
not say, Give them up to toil, exposure, suffering, 
death, without a murmur ; — that implies reluc- 
tance. I rather say. Urge them to the offering ; 
fill them with sacred fury ; fire them with irre- 
sistible desire ; strengthen them to heroic will. 
Look not on details, the present, the trivial, the 



MY COUNTRYWOMEN. 255 

fleeting aspects of our conflict, but fix your ardent 
gaze on its eternal side. Be not resigned, but 
rejoicing. Be spontaneous and exultant. Be large 
and lofty. Count it all joy that you are reckoned 
worthy to suffer In a grand and righteous cause. 
Give thanks evermore that you were born in this 
time ; and because it is dark, be you the light of 
the world. 

And follow the soldier to the battle-field with 
your spirit. The great army of letters that marches 
southward with every morning sun is a powerful 
engine of war. Fill them with tears and sighs, 
lament separation and suffering, dwell on your 
loneliness and fears, mourn over the dishonesty 
of contractors and the incompetency of leaders, 
doubt If the South will ever be conquered, and 
foresee financial ruin, and you will damp the 
powder and dull the swords that ought to deal 
death upon the foe. Write as tenderly as you 
will. In camp, the roughest man Idealizes his far- 
off" home, and every word of love uplifts him to a 
lover. But let your tenderness unfold its sunny 
side, and keep the shadows for His pity who knows 
the end from the beginning, and whom no fore- 
boding can dishearten. Glory in your tribulation. 
Show your soldier that his unflinching courage, his 
undying fortitude, are your crown of rejoicing. 
Incite him to enthusiasm by your inspiration. 
Make a mock of your discomforts. Be unweary- 
ing in details of the little interests of home. Fill 



256 A CALL TO 

your letters with kittens and canaries, with baby's 
shoes, and Johnny's sled, and the old cloak which 
you have turned into a handsome gown. Keep 
him posted in all the village-gossip, the lectures, 
the courtings, the sleigh-rides, and the singing- 
schools. Bring out the good points of the world 
in strong relief. Tell every piquant and pleasant 
and funny story you can think of. Show him 
that you clearly apprehend that all this warfare 
means peace, and that a dastardly peace would 
pave the way for speedy, incessant, and more ap- 
palling warfare. Help him to bear his burdens 
by showing him how elastic you are under yours. 
Hearten him, enliA^en him, tone him up to the true 
hero-pitch. Hush your plaintive Miserere, accept 
the nation's pain for penance, and commission 
every Northern breeze to bear a Te Deum lau- 
damus. 

It fell to me once to read the record of a young 
life laid early on our country's altar. I saw noble 
words traced by the still hand, — words of duty 
and honor and love and trust that thrilled my 
heart and brought back once more the virtue of 
the Golden Age, — nay, rather revealed the virgin 
gold of this ; but through all his letters and his 
life shone, half concealed, yet wholly revealed, a 
silver thread of light, woven in by a woman's 
hand. Rest and courage and hope, patience in 
the weariness of disease, strength that nei?ved his 
arm for shock and onset, and for the last grand 



MY COUNTRYWOMEN. 257 

charge that laid his young head low, — all flowed 
in upon him through the tones of one brave, 
sweet voice far off. A gentle, fragile, soft-eyed 
woman, what could such a delicate flower do 
against the "thunder-storm of battle"? What 
did she do? Poured her own great heart and 
her own high spirit mto the patriot's heart and 
soul, and so did all. Now as she goes to and 
fro in her daily life, soft-eyed still and serene, 
she seems to me no longer a beautiful girl, but a 
saint wrapped around already with the radiance 
of immortality. 

Under God, the only question, as to whether 
this war shall be conducted to a shameful or an 
honorable close, is not of men or money or material 
resource. In these our superiority is unquestioned. 
As Wellington phrased it, there is hard pounding ; 
but w^e shall pound the longest, if only our hearts 
d(i not fail us. Women need not beat their pewter 
spoons into bullets, for there are plenty of bullets 
without them. It is not whether our soldiers shall 
fight a good fight ; they have played the man on a 
hundred battle-fields. It is not whether officers 
are or are not competent ; generals have blundered 
nations into victory since the world began. It is 
whether this people shall have virtue to endure to 
the end, — to endure, not starving, not cold, but 
the pangs of hope deferred, of disappointment and 
uncertainty, of commerce deranged and outward 
prosperity checked. Will our vigilance to detect 



k 



^58 ^ CALL TO 

treachery and our perseverance to punish it hold 
out ? If we stand firm, we shall be saved, though 
so as by fire. If we do not, we shall fall, and 
shall richly deserve to fall ; and may God sweep 
us off from the face of the earth, and plant in our 
stead a nation with the hearts of men ! 

O women, here you may stand powerful, invin- 
cible, I had almost ^aid omnipotent. Rise now to 
the heights of a sublime courage, — for the hour 
has need of you. When the first ball smote the 
rocky sides of Sumter, the rebound thrilled from 
shore to shore, and waked the slumbering hero in 
every human soul. Then every eye flamed, every 
lip was touched wnth a live coal from the sa- 
cred altar, every form dilated to the stature of 
the ideal time. Then we felt in our veins the 
pulse of immortal youth. Then all the chivalry 
of the ancient days, all the heroism, all the self- 
sacrifice that shaped itself into noble living, came 
back to us, poured over us, swept away the 
dross of selfishness and deception and petty schem- 
ing, and Patriotism rose from the swelling wave 
stately as a goddess. Patriotism, that had been 
to us but a dingy and meaningless antiquity, took 
on a new form, a new mien, a countenance di- 
vinely fair and forever young, and received once 
more the homage of our hearts. Was that a 
childish outburst of excitement, or the glow of an 
aroused principle ? Was it a puerile anger, or a 
manly indignation ? Did we spring up startled 



MY COUNTRYWOMEN, 259 

pygmies, or girded giants ? If the former, let us 
veil our faces, and march swiftly (and silently) to 
merciful forgetfulness. If the latter, shall we not 
lay aside every weight, and this besetting sin of 
despondency, and run with patience the race set 
before us ? 

A true philosophy and a true religion make the 
way possible to us. The Most High ruleth in the 
kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He 
will ; and he never yet willed that a nation strong 
in means, and battling for the right, should be 
given over to a nation weak and battling for the 
wrong. Nations have their future — reward and 
penalty — In this world; and it is as certain as 
God lives, that Providence and the heaviest bat- 
talions w^ll prevail. We have had reverses, but 
no misfortune hath happened unto us but such as 
is common unto nations. Country has been sacri- 
ficed to partisanship. Early love has fallen away, 
and lukewarmness has taken its place. Unlimited 
enthusiasm has given place to limited stolidity. 
Disloyalty, overawed at first into quietude, has 
lifted Its head among us, and waxes wroth and 
ravenlncr. There are dissensions at home w^orse 
than the guns of our foes. Some that did run 
wvll have faltered ; some signal-lights have gone 
shamefully out, and some are lurid with a baleful 
glare. But unto this end were we born, and for 
this cause came w^e into the world. When shall 
greatness of soul stand forth. If not In evil times ? 



260 A CALL TO 

When the skies are fair and the seas smooth, all 
ships sail festively. But the clouds lower, the 
winds shriek, the waves boil, and immediately 
each craft shf)ws its quality. The deep is strown 
with broken masts, parted keels, floating wrecks ; 
but here and there a ship rides the raging sea, and 
flings defiance to the wind. She overlives the sea 
because she is sea-worthy. Not our eighty years 
of peace alone, but our two years of war, are the 
touchstone of our character. We have rolled our 
Democracy as a sweet morsel under our tongue ; 
we have gloried in the prosperity which it brought 
to the individual ; but if the comforts of men 
minister to the degradation of man, if Democracy 
levels down and does not level up, if our era of 
peace and plenty leaves us so feeble and frivolous, 
so childish, so impatient, so deaf to all that calls to 
us from the past, and entreats us in the future, 
that we faint and fail under the stress of our one 
short effort, then indeed is our* Democracy our 
shame and curse. Let us show now what manner 
of people we are. Let us be clear-sighted and far- 
sighted to see how great is the issue that hangs 
upon the occasion. It is not a mere military repu- 
tation that is at stake, not the decay of a genera- 
tion's commerce, not the determination of this or 
that party to power. It is the question of the 
world that we have been set to answer. In the 
great conflict of ages, the long strife between right 
and wrong, between progress and sluggardy, 



MY COUNTRYWOMEN. 261 

:hrough the providence of God we are placed in 
:he vanguard. Three hundred years ago a world 
w^as unfolded for the battle-ground. Choice spirits 
:ame hither to level and intrench. Swords clashed 
ind blood flowed, and the great reconnoisance was 
mccessfully made. Since then both sides have 
been gathering strength, marshalling forces, plant- 
ing batteries, and to-day we stand in the thick of 
che fray. Shall we fail? Men and women of 
America, will you fail ? Shall the cause go by 
default? When a great idea, that has been up- 
lifted on the shoulders of generations, comes now 
to its Thermopylae, its glory-gate, and needs only 
stout hearts for its strong hands, — when the eyes 
of a great multitude are turned upon you, and the 
fates of dumb millions in the silent future rest 
with you, — when the suifering and sorrowful, the 
lowly, whose immortal hunger for justice gnaws at 
their hearts, who blindly see, but keenly feel, by 
their God-given instincts, that somehow you are 
working out their salvation, and the high-born, 
nionarchs in the domain of mind, who, standing 
far oflP, see with prophetic eye the two courses that 
lie before you, one to the Uplands of vindicated 
Kight, one to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, 
alike fasten upon you their hopes, their prayers, 
their tears, — will you, for a moment's bodily com- 
fort and rest and repose, grind all these expecta- 
tions and hopes between the upper and nether 
millstone ? Will you fail the world in this fateful 



1 



262 A CALL TO 

hour by your faint-heartedness ? Will you fail 
yourself, and put the knife to your own throat? 
For the peace which you so dearly buy shall bring 
to you neither ease nor rest. You will but have 
spread a bed of thorns. Failure will write disgrace 
upon the brow of this generation, and shame will 
outlast the age. It is not with us as with the 
South. She can surrender without dishonor. She 
is the weaker power, and her success will be 
against the nature of things. Her dishonor lay in 
her attempt, not in its relinquishment. But we 
shall fail, not because of mechanics and mathe- 
matics, but because our manhood and womanhood 
weighed in the balance are found wanting. There 
are few who will not share in the sin. There are 
none who will not share in the shame. Wives, 
would you hold back your husbands? Mothers, 
would you keep your sons? From what? for 
what ? From the doing of the grandest duty that 
ever ennobled man, to the grief of the greatest 
infamy that ever crushed him down. You would 
hold him back from prizes before which Olympian 
laurels fade, for a fate before which a Helot slave 
might cower. His country in the agony of her 
death-struggle calls to him for succor. All the 
blood in all the ages, poured out for liberty, 
poured out for him, cries unto him from the 
ground. All that life has of noble, of heroic, 
beckons him forward. Death itself wears for him 
a ffolden crown. Ever since the world swuno; 



MY COUNTRYWOMEN. 263 

free from God's hand, men have died, — obeying 
the bhnd fiat of Nature ; but only once in a gen- 
eration comes the sacrificial year, the year of ju- 
bilee, when men march lovingly to meet their fate 
and die for a nation's life. Holding back, we 
transmit to those that shall come after us a black- 
ened waste. The little one that lies in his cradle 
will be accursed for our sakes. Every child will 
be base-born, springing from ignoble blood. We 
inherited a fair fame, and bays from a glorious 
battle ; but for him is no background, no stand- 
point. His country will be a burden on his shoul- 
ders, a blush upon his cheek, a chain about his 
feet. There is no career for the future, but a 
weary effort, a long, a painful, a heavy-hearted 
struorcrle to lift the land out of its slouo;h of deo;ra- 
dation and set it once more upon a dry place. 

Therefore let us have done at once and forever 
with paltry considerations, with talk of despond- 
ency and darkness. Let compromise, submission, 
and every form of dishonorable peace be not so 
much as named among us. Tolerate no coward's 
voice or pen or eye. Wherever the serpent's 
head is raised, strike it down. Measure every 
man by the standard of manhood. Measure coun- , 
try's price by country's worth, and country's worth 
by country's integrity. Let a cold, clear breeze 
sweep down from the mountains of life, and drive 
out these miasmas that befoo; and be^iuile the 
unwary. Around every hearthstone let sunshine 



264 A CALL TO MY COUNTRYWOMEN. 

gleam. In every home let fatherland have itj 
altar and its fortress. From every household lei 
words of cheer and resolve and high-heartinesE 
ring out, till the whole land is shining and reso- 
nant in the bloom of its awakening spring. 




A Spasm of Sense. 



12 



A Spasm of Sense. 




HE conjunction of amiability and sense 
in the same individual renders that 
individual's position in a world like 
this very disagreeable. Amiability 
without sense, or sense without amiability, runs 
along smoothly enough. The former takes things 
as they are. It receives all glitter as pure gold, 
and does not see that it is custom alone which 
varnishes wrong with a shiny coat of respectability, 
and glorifies selfishness with the aureole of sacri- 
fice. It sets down all collisions as foreordained, 
and never observes that they occur because people 
will not smooth off their angles, but sharpen them, 
and not only sharpen them, but run them into you. 
It forgets that the Lord made man upright, but he 
hath sought out many inventions. It attributes 
all the confusion and inaptitude which it finds to 
the nature of things, and never suspects that the 
Devil goes around in the night, thrusting the 
square men into the round places, and the round 



y 



2G8 A SPASM OF SENSE. 

men into the square places. It never notices that I 
the reason why the rope does not unwind easily is 
because one strand is a world too laro^e, and another 
a world too small, and so it sticks where it ouojht to 
roll, and rolls where it ought to stick. It makes 
sweet, faint efforts, with tender fingers and palpi- 
tating heart to oil the wheels and polish up the ma- 
chine, and does not for a moment imagine that the 
hitch is owing to original incompatibility of parts and 
purposes, that the whole machine must be pulled 
to pieces and made over, and that nothing will be 
done by standing patiently by, trying to soothe 
away the creaking and wheezing and groaning of 
the laboring, lumbering thing, by laying on a little 
drop of sweet oil with a pin-feather. As it does 
not see any of these things that are happening be- 
fore its eyes, of course it is shallowly happy. And 
on the other hand, he who does see them, and is 
not amiable, is grimly and Grendally happy. He 
likes to say disagreeable things, and all this dismay 
and disaster scatter disao-reeable things broadcast 
along his path, so that all lie has to do is to pick 
them up and say them. Therefore this w^orld is 
his paradise. He would not know what to do 
with himself in a world where matters were sorted 
and folded and laid away ready for you when you 
sliould want them. He, likes to see human affairs 
mixing themselves up in irretrievable confusion. 
If he detects a symptom of straightening, it shall 
go hard but he will thrust in his own fingers and 



A .SPASM OF SENSE. 269 

snarl a thread or two. He is delighted to find 
doo:2;ed duty and eao;er desire buttino; each other. 
All the irresistible forces crashino; ao;ainst all the 
immovable bodies give him no shock, only a pleas- 
ant titillation. He is never so happy as when men 
are taking hold of things by the blade, and cutting 
their hands, and losing blood. He tells them of 
it, but not in order to relieve so much as to " ag- 
gravate " them ; and he does aggravate them, and 
is satisfied. O, but he is an aggravating person ! 

It is you, you who combine the heart of a serapli 
with the head of a cherub, who know what trouble 
is. You see where the shoe pinches, but your 
whole soul shrinks from pointing out the tender 
place. You see why things go wrong, and how 
they might be set right ; but you have a mortal 
dread of being thought meddlesome and imper- 
tinent, or cold and cruel, or restless and arro- 
gant, if you attempt to demolish the wrong or 
rebel against the custom. When you draw your 
bow at an abuse, people think you are trying to 
bring down religion and propriety and humanity. 
But your conscience will not let you see the abuse 
raving to and fro over the earth without taking 
aim ; so, either w^ay, you are cut to the heart. 
^ I love men. I adore women. I value their 
good opinion. There is much in them to applaud 
and imitate. There is much in them to elicit faith 
and reverence. If, only, one could see their good 
qualities alone, or, seeing their vapid and vicious 



270 A SPASM OF SENSE. 






!i 



i 



ones, could contemplate them with no touch o: 
tenderness for the owner, life might indeed b(' 
lovely. As it is, while I am at one moment rap^' 
in enthusiastic admiration of the strength and 
grace, the power and pathos, the hidden resources! 
the profound capabilities of my race, at another, 
could wish, Nero-like, that all mankind were con-H 
centrated in one person, and all womankind ir 
another, that 1 might take them, after the fashioi 
of rural schoolmasters, and shake their heads to 
gether. Condemnation and reproach are not ii; 
ray line ; but there is so much in the world that 
merits condemnation and reproach, and receive&j 
indifference and even reward, there is so much 
acquiescence in wrong doing and wrong thinkingj 
so much letting things jolt along in the same rut 
wherein we and they were born, without inquiring 
whether, lifted into another groove, they mighty 
not run more easily, that, if one who does see the! 
difficulty holds his peace, the very stones will cry( 
out. However gladly one would lie on a bed of 
roses and glide silken-sailed down the stream of 
life, how exquisitely painful soever it may be to 
say what you fear and feel may give pain, it is ' 
only a Sybarite who sets ease above righteousness, 
only a coward who misses victory through dread f 
of defeat. 

There are many false Ideas afloat regarding 
womanly duties. I do not design now to open 
anew any vulgar, worn-out, woman's-rightsy ques- 



I 



[ A SPASAI OF SENSE. -271 

tion. Every remark that could be made on tnat 
theme has been made — but one, and that I will 
take the liberty to make now in a single sentence, 
and close the discussion. It is this :/the man who 
gave rubber-boots to women .did more to elevate 
woman than all the theorizers, male or female, that 
ever were born. 

But without any suspicious lunges into that 
dubious region which lies outside of woman's 
universally acknowledged " sphere," (a blignt rest 
upon the word !) there is within the pale, within 
the boundary-line which the most conservative 
never dreamed of questioning, room fof a great 
divergence of ideas. Now divergence of ideas 
does not necessarily imply fighting at short range. 
People may adopt a course of conduct which you 
do not approve ; yet you may feel it your duty to 
make no open animadversion. Circumstances may 
have suggested such a course to them, or forced it 
upon them ; and perhaps, considering all things, it 
is the best they can do. But when, encouraged 
by your silence, they publish it to the world, not 
only as relatively, but intrinsically, the best and 
most desirable, — when, not content with swallow- 
ing it themselves as medicine, they insist on ram- 
ming it down your throat as food, -— it is time to 
buckle on your armor, and have at them. 

A little book, published by the Tract Society, 
called " The Mother and her Work," has been 
doing just this thing. It is a modest little book. 



272 A SPASM OF SENSE. 

It makes no pretensions to literary or other supe- 
riority. It has much excellent counsel, pious re- 
flection, and comfortable suggestion. Being a 
little book, it costs but little, and it will console, 
refresh, and instruct weary, conscientious moth- 
ers, and so have a large circulation, a wide influ- 
ence, and do an immense amount of mischief. 
For the Evil One in his senses never sends out 
poison labelled " Poison." He mixes it in with 
great quantities of innocent and nutritive flour and 
sugar. He shapes it in cunning shapes of pigs 
and lambs and hearts and birds and braids. He 
tints it with gay hues of green and pink and rose, 
and puts it in the confectioner's glass windows, 
where you buy — what ? Poison ? No, indeed ! 
Candy, at prices to suit the purchasers. So this 
good and pious little book has such a preponder- 
ance of goodness and piety that the poison in it 
will not be detected, except by chemical analysis. 
It will go down sweetly, like grapes of Beulah. 
Nobody will suspect he is poisoned ; but just so 
far as it reaches and touches, the social dyspepsia 
will be aggravated. 

I submit a few atoms of the poison revealed by 
careful examination. 

" The mother's is a most honorable calling. 
' What a pity that one so gifted should be so tied 
down ! ' remarks a superficial observer, as she 
looks upon the mother of a young and increasing 
family. The pale, thin face and feeble step, be- 



A SPASM OF SENSE. 273 

speaking the multiplied and wearying cares of 
domestic life, elicit an earnest sympathy from the 
many, thoughtlessly flitting across her pathway, 
and the remark passes from mouth to mouth, 
* How I pity her I What a shame it is ! She is 
completely worn down with so many children.' 
It may be, however, that this young mother is one 
who needs and asks no pity," etc. 

"But the true mother yields herself uncomplain- 
ingly, yea, cheerfully, to the wholesome privation, 

solitude, and self-denial allotted her Was 

she fond of travelling, of visiting the wonderful in 
Nature and in Art, of mingling in new and often- 
varying scenes ? Now she has found ' an abiding 
city,' and no allurements are strong enough to 
tempt her thence. Had society charms for her, 
and in the social circle and* the festive throng were 
her chief delights ? Now she stays at home, and 
the gorgeous saloon and brilliant assemblage give 
place to the nursery and the baby. Was she de- 
voted to literary pursuits ? Now the library is 
seldom visited, the cherished studies are neglected, 
the rattle and the doll are substituted for the pen. 
Her piano is silent, while she chants softly and 
sweetly the soothing lullaby. Her dress can last 
another season now, and the hat — oh, she does 
not care, if it is not in the latest mode, for she has 
a baby to look after, and has no time for herself. 
Even the ride and the walk are given up, per- 
haps too often, with the excuse, ' Baby-tending 
12* a 



274 A SPASM OF SENSE, 

is exercise enough for me.* Her whole Hfe is 
reversed." 

The assumption is, that all this is just as it 
should be. The thoughtless person may fancy 
that it is a pity ; but it is not a pity. This is a 
model mother and a model state of things. It is 
not simply to be submitted to, not simply to be pa- 
tiently borne ; it is to be aspired to as the noblest 
and holiest state. 

That is the strychnine. You may counsel peo- 
ple to take joyfully the spoiling of their goods, and 
comfort, encourage, and strengthen them by so 
doing ; but when you tell them that to be robbed 
and plundered is of itself a priceless blessing, the 
highest stage of human development, you do them 
harm ; because, in general, falsehood is always 
harmful, and because, in particular, so far as you 
influence them at all, you prevent them from tak- 
ing measures to stop the wrong-doing. You ought 
to counsel them to bear with Christian resignation 
what they cannot help ; but you ought with equal 
fervor to counsel them to look around and see if 
there are not many things which they can help, 
and if there are, by all means to help them. 
What is inevitable comes to us from God, no 
matter how many hands it passes through ; but 
submission to unnecessary evils is cowardice or 
laziness'; and extolling of the evil as good is sheer 
ignorance, or perversity, or servility. Even the 
ills that must be borne, should be borne under 



A SPASM OF SENSE. 275 

protest, lest patience degenerate into slavery. 
Christian character is never formed by acquies- 
cence in, or apotheosis of wrong. 

The principle that underlies these extracts, and 
makes them ministrative of evil, is the principle 
that a woman can benefit her children by sacriS- 
cing herself. It teaches, that pale, thin faces and 
feeble steps are excellent things in young mothers, 
— provided they are gained by maternal duties. 
We infer that it is meet, right, and the bounden 
duty of such to give up society, reading, riding, 
music, and become indifferent to dress, cultivation, 
recreation, to everything, in short, except taking 
care of the children. It is all just as wrong as it 
can be. It is wrong morally ; it is wrong socially ; 
wrong in principle, wrong in practice. It is a blun- 
der as well as a crime, for it works woe. It is a 
wrong means to accomplish an end ; and it does 
not accomplish the end, after all, but demolishes it. 

On the contrary, the duty and dignity of a 
mother require that she should never subordinate 
herself to her children. When she does so, she 
does it to their manifest injury and her own. Of 
course, if illness or accident demand unusual care, 
she does well to grow thin and pale in bestowing 
unusual care. But when a mother in the ordinary 
routine of life grows thin and pale, gives up riding, 
reading, and the amusements and occupations of 
life, there is a wrong somewhere, and her children 
shall reap the fruits of it. The father and mother 



276 A SPASM OF SENSE. 

are the head of the family, the most comely and 
the most honorable part. They cannot benefit 
their children by descending from their Heaven- 
appointed places, and becoming perpetual and ex- 
clusive feet and hands. This is the great fault of 
American mothers. They swamp themselves in 
a slough of self-sacrifice. They are smothered in 
their own sweetness. They dash into domesticity 
with an impetus and abandonment that annihilate 
themselves. They sink into their families like a 
light in a poisonous well, and are extinguished. 

One hears much complaint of the direction and 
character of female education. It is dolefully af- 
firmed that young ladies learn how to sing operas 
but not how to keep house, — that they can conju 
o-ate Greek verbs, but cannot make bread, — that 
they are good for pretty toying, but not for homely 
usino;. Doubtless there is foundation for this re- 
mark, or it would never have been made. But I 
have been in the East and the West, and the 
North and the South ; I know that I have seen 
the best society, and I am sure I have seen very 
bad, if not the w^orst ; and I never met a woman 
whose superior education, whose piano, whose 
pencil, whose German, or French, or any school- 
accomplishments, or even whose novels, clashed 
with her domestic duties. I have read of them in 
books ; I did hear of one once ; but I never met 
one, — not one. I have seen Avomen, through 
love of gossip, througli indolence, through sheer 



A SPASM OF SENSE. 277 

famine of mental pabulum, leave undone things 
that ought to be done, — rush to the assembly, 
the lecture-room, the sewing-circle, or vegetate in 
squaHd, shabby, unwholesome homes ; but I never 
saw education run to ruin. So it seems to me that 
we are needlessly alarmed in that direction. 

But I have seen scores and scores of women 
leave school, leave their piano and drawing and 
fancy-work, and all manner of pretty and pleasant 
things, and marry and bury themselves. You hear 
of them about six times in ten years, and there is 
a baby each time. They crawl out of the farther 
end of the ten years, sallow and wrinkled and 
lank, — teeth gone, hair gone, roses gone, plump- 
ness gone, — freshness, and vivacity, and sparkle, 
everything that is dewy, and springing, and spon- 
taneous, gone, gone, gone forever. This our Tract- 
Society book puts very prettily. " She wraps 
herself in the robes of infantile simplicity, and, 
burying her womanly nature in the tomb of child- 
hood, patiently awaits the sure-coming resurrection 
in the form of a noble, high-minded, world-stirring 
son, or a virtuous, lovely daughter. The nursery 
Is the mother's chrysalis. Let her abide for a little 
season, and she shall emerge triumphantly, with 
ethereal wings and a happy flight." 

But the nursery ought not to be the moth- 
er's chrysalis. God never intended lier to wind 
herself up into a cocoon. If he had, he would 
have made her a caterpillar. She has no right to 



278 A. SPASiM OF SENSE. 

bury her womanly nature in the tomb of child- 
hood. It will surely be required at her hands. 
It was given her to sun itself in the broad, bright 
day, to root itself fast and firm in the earth, to 
spread itself wide to the sky, that her children 
in their infancy and youth and maturity, that her 
husband in his strength and his weakness, that 
her kinsfolk and neighbors and the poor of the 
land, the halt and the Wind and all Christ's little 
ones, may sit under its shadow with great delight. 
No woman has a rio-ht to sacrifice her own soul to 
problematical, high-minded, world-stirring sons, 
and virtuous, lovely daughters. To be the mother 
of such, one might perhaps pour out one's life in 
draughts so copious that the fountain should run 
dry ; but world-stirring people are extremely rare. 
One in a century is a liberal allowance. The over- 
whelming probabilities are, that her sons will be 
lawyers and shoemakers and farmers and com- 
mission-merchants, her daughters nice, " smart," 
pretty girls, all good, honest, kind-hearted, com- 
monplace people, not at all world-stirring, not at 
all the people one would glory to merge one's self 
in. If the mother is not satisfied with this, if 
she wants them otherwise, she must be otherwise. , 
The surest way to have high-minded children is to 
be high-minded yourself. A man cannot burrow j 
in his counting-room for ten or twenty of the best: 
years of his life, and come out as much of a man 
and as little of a mole as he went in. But the 



A SPASM OF SENSE. 279 

twenty years should have ministered to his man- 
hood, histead of trampling on it. Still less can a 
woman bury herself in her nursery, and come out 
without harm. But the years should have done 
her great good. This world is not made for a 
tomb, but a garden. You are to be a seed, not 
a death. Plant yourself, and you will sprout. 
Bury yourself, and you can only decay. For a 
dead opportunity there is no resurrection. The 
only enjoyment, the only use to be attained in this 
world, must be attained on the wing. Each day 
brings its own happiness, its own benefit ; but it 
has none to spare. What escapes to-day is escaped 
forever. To-morrow has no overflow to atone for 
the lost yesterdays. 

Few things are more painful to look upon than 
the self-renunciation, the self-abnegation of moth- 
ers, — painful both for its testimony and its proph- 
ecy. Its testimony is of over-care, over-work, 
over-weariness, the abuse of capacities that w^ere 
bestowed for most sacred uses, an utter waste of 
most pure and life-giving waters. Its prophecy is 
of early decline and decadence, forfeiture of position 
and power, and worst, perhaps, of all, irreparable 
loss and grievous wrong to the children for whom 
all is sacrificed. 

God gives to the mother supremacy in her 
family. It belongs to her to maintain it. This 
cannot be done without exertion. The temptation 
to come down fi'om her throne, and become a mere 



280 A SPASM OF SENSE. 

hewer of wood and drawer of water is very strong. 
It is so much easier to work with the hands than 
with the head. One can chop sticks all day se- 
renely unperplexed. But to administer a gov- 
ernment demands observation and knowledo-e and 
judgment and resolution and inexhaustible pa- 
tience. Yet, however uneasy lies the head that 
wears the crown of womanhood, that crown can- 
not be bartered away for any baser wreath without 
infinite harm. In both cases there must be sacri- 
fice ; but in the one case it is unto death, in the 
other unto life. If the mother stands on high 
ground, she brings her children up to her own 
level ; if she sinks, they sink with her. 

To maintain her rank, no exertion is too great, 
no means too small. Dress is one of the most 
obvious things to a child. If the mother wears 
cheap or shabby or ill-assorted clothes, while the 
children's are fine and harmonious, it is impossible 
that they should not receive the impression that 
they are of more consequence than their mother. 
Therefore, for her children's sake, if not for her 
own, the mother should always be well-dressed. 
Her baby, so far as it is concerned in the matter, 
instead of being an excuse for a faded bonnet, 
should be an inducement for a fresh one. It is 
not a question of riches or poverty ; it is a thing 
of relations. It is simply that the mother's dress 
— her mornino; and evening and street and church 
dress — should be quite as good as, and if there is 



A SPASM OF SENSE. 281 

any difference, better than her child's. It is of 
no manner of consequence how a child is clad, 
provided only its health be not injured, its taste 
corrupted, or its self-respect wounded. Children 
look prettier in the cheapest and simplest materials 
than in the richest and most elaborate. But how 
common is it to see the children gayl j caparisoned in 
silk and feathers and flounces, while the motlier is 
enveloped in an atmosphere of cottony fadiness ! 
One would take the child to be mistress, and the 
mother a servant. " But," the mother says, " I 
do not care for dress, and Caroline does. She, 
poor child, would be mortified not to be dressed 
like the other children." Then do you teach her 
better. Plant in her mind a higher standard of 
self-respect. Don't tell her you cannot afford to 
do for her thus and thus ; that will scatter prema- 
ture thorns along her path ; but say that you do 
not approve of it ; it is proper for her to dress in 
such and such a way. And be so nobly and 
grandly a woman that she shall have faith in 
you. 

It is essential also that the mother have sense, 
intelligence, comprehension. As much as she can 
add of education and accomplishments will in- 
crease her stock in trade. Her reading and riding 
and music, instead of beino; nedected for her cliil- 
dren's sake, should for their sake be scrupulously 
cultivated. Of the two things, it is a thousand 
times better that they should be attended by a 



282 A SPASM OF SENSE. 

nursery-maid in their infancy than by a feeble, 
timid, inefficient matron in their youth. The 
mother can oversee half a dozen children with a 
nurse ; but she needs all her strength, all her mind, 
her own eyes, and ears, and quick perceptions, 
and delicate intuition, and calm self-possession, 
when her sturdy boys and wild young girls are 
leaping and bounding and careering into their 
lusty life. All manner of novel temptations be- 
set them, — perils by night and perils by day, — 
perils in the house and by the way. Their fierce 
and hungry young souls, rioting in awakening 
consciousness, ravening for pleasure, strong and 
tumultuous, snatch eagerly at every bait. They 
want then a mother able to curb, and guide, and 
rule them ; and only a mother who commands 
their respect can do this. Let them see her sought 
for her social worth, — let them see that she is 
familiar with all the conditions of their life, — that 
her vision is at once broader and keener than 
theirs, — that her feet have travelled alono; the 
paths they are just beginning to explore, — that 
she knows all the phases alike of their strength 
and their weakness, — and her influence over them 
is unbounded. Let them see her uncertain, un- 
comfortable, hesitating, fearful without discrimi- 
nation, leaning where she ought to support, in- 
terfering without power of suggesting, counselling, 
but not controlling, with no presence, no bearing, 
no experience, no prestige, and they ^Yill carry 



A SPASM OF SENSE. 283 

matters with a high hand. They will overrule 
her decisions, and their love will not be unmin- 
gled with contempt. It will be strong enough to 
prick them when they have done wrong, but not 
strong enough to keep them from doing wrong. 

Nothing gives a young girl such vantage-ground 
in society and in life as a mother, — a sensible, 
amiable, brilliant, and commanding woman. Un- 
der the shelter of such a mother's wing, the neo- 
phyte is safe. This mother will attract to herself 
the wittiest and the wisest. The young girl can 
see society in its best phases, without being her- 
self drawn out into its glare. She forms her own 
style on the purest models. She gains confidence, 
without losing modesty. Familiar with wisdom, 
she will not be dazed by folly. Having the op- 
portunity to make observations before she begins 
to be observed, she does not become the prey of 
the w^eak and the wicked. Her taste is strength- 
ened and refined, her standard elevates itself, her 
judgment acquires a firm basis. But cast upon 
her own resources, her own blank inexperience, 
at her first entrance into the world, with nothing 
to stand between her and what is openly vapid 
and covertly vicious, with no clear eye to detect 
for her the false and distinguish the true, no 
strong, firm, judicious hand to guide tenderly and 
undeviatingly, to repress without irritating and 
encourage without emboldening, what wonder that 
the peach-bloom loses its delicacy, deepening into 



284 A SPASM OF SENSE. 

rong-e or hardening into brass, and the happy 
young hfe is stranded on a cruel shore ? 

Hence it follows that our social o;atherino;s con- 
sist, to so lamentable an extent, of pert youngsters, 
or faded oldsters. Thence come those abominable 
"young people's parties," where a score or two 
or three of boys and girls meet and manage after 
their own hearts. Thence it happens that con- 
versation seems to be taking its place among the 
Lost Arts, and the smallest of small talk reigns 
in its stead. Society, instead of giving its tone to 
the children, takes it from them, and since it 
cannot be juvenile, becomes insipid, and because 
it is too old to prattle, jabbers. \ Talkers are 
everywhere, but where are the men that say 
things ? Where are the people that can be listened 
to and quoted ? AVhere are the flinty people 
whose contact strikes fire ? Where are the elec- 
tric people who thrill a whole circle with sudden 
vitality ? )Where are the strong people who hedge 
themselves around with their individuality, and 
will be roused by no prince's kiss, but taken only 
by storm, yet once captured, are sweeter than the 
dews of Hymettus ? Where are the seers, the 
prophets, the Magi, who shall unfold for us the 
secrets of the sky and the seas, and the mystery 
of human hearts ? 

Yet fathers and mothers not only acquiesce in 
this state of things, they approve of it. They 
foster it. They are forward to annihilate them- 



A SPASM OF SENSE. 285 

selves. They are careful to let their darlings go 
out alone, lest they be a restraint upon them, — 
as if that were not what parents were made for. 
If they were what they ought to be, the restraint 
would be not only wholesome, but impalpable. 
The relation between parents and children should 
be such that pleasure shall not be quite perfect, 
unless shared by both. Parents ought to talve 
such a tender, proud, intellectual interest in the 
pursuits and amusements of their children that 
the children shall feel the glory of the victory 
dimmed, unless their parents are there to witness 
it. If the presence of a sensible mother is felt 
as a restramt, it shows conclusively that restraint 
is needed. 

A woman also needs self-cultivation, both physi- 
cal and mental, in order to self-respect. Un- 
doubtedly Diogenes glorified himself in his tub. 
But people in general, and women in universal, — 
except the geniuses, — need the pomp of circum- 
stance. A slouchy garb is both effect and cause 
of a slouchy mind. A woman who lets go her 
hold upon dress, literature, music, amusement, 
will almost inevitably slide down into a bog of 
muggy moral indolence. She will lose her spirit , 
and when the spirit is gone out of a woman, there 
is not much left of her. When she cheapens 
herself, she diminishes her value. Especially when 
the evanescent charms of mere youth are gone, 
when the responsibilities of life have left their 



286 A. SPAS3f OF SENSE. 

mark upon her, is it indispensable that she attend 
to all the fitnesses of externals, and strengthen 
and polish all her mental and social qualities. By 
this I do not mean that women should allow them- 
selves to lose their beauty as they increase in years. 
Men grow handsomer as they grow older. There 
is no reason, there ought to be no reason, wdiy 
women should not. They will have a different 
kind of beauty, but it will be just as truly beauty 
and more impressive and attractive than the beauty 
of sixteen. It is absurd to suppose that God has 
made women so that their glory passes away in 
half a dozen years. It is absurd to suppose that 
thought and feeling and passion and purpose, all 
holy instincts and impulses, can chisel away on 
a woman's face for thirty, forty, fifty years, and 
leave that face at the end worse than they found 
it. They found it a negative, — mere skin and 
bone, blood and muscle and fat. They can but 
leave their mark upon it, and the mark of good 
is good. Pity does not have the same finger- 
touch as revenge. Love does not hold the same 
brush as hatred. Sym})athy and gratitude and 
b'lievolence have a different simi-manual from 
cruelty and carelessness and deceit. All these 
busy little sprites draw their fine lines, lay on 
their fine colors ; the face lights up under their 
tiny hands ; the prisoned soul shines clearer and 
clearer through, and there is the consecration and 
the poet's dream. 



I 



A SPASM OF SENSE. 2S7 

But such beauty is made, not born. Care and 
weariness and despondency come of themselves, 
and groove their own furrows. Hope and intel- 
ligence and interest and buoyancy must be wooed 
for their gentle and genial touch. A mother must 
battle against the tendencies that drag her down- 
ward. She must take pains to grow, or she will 
not grow. She must sedulously cultivate her 
mind and heart, or her old age will be ungrace- 
ful ; and if she lose freshness without acquiring 
ripeness, she is indeed in an evil case. The first, 
the most important trust which God has given 
to any one is himself. To secure this trust. He 
has made us so that in no possible way can we 
benefit the world so much as by making the most 
of ourselves. Indulging our whims, or, inordi- 
nately, our just tastes, is not developing ourselves; 
but neither is leaving our own fields to grow 
thorns and thistles, that we may plant somebody 
else's garden-plot, keeping our charge. Even 
were it possible for a mother to work well to her 
children in thus working ill to herself, I do not 
think she would be justified in doing it. Her 
account is not complete when she says, " Here 
are they whom thou hast given me." She must 
first say, " Here am I." But when it is seen 
that suicide is also child-murder, it must appear 
that she is under doubly heavy bonds for herself. 

Husbands, moreover, have claims, though wives 
often ignore them. It is the commonest thing in 



288 A SPASM OF SENSE. 

the world to see parents tender of their children's 

feelings, alive to their wants, indulgent to their 

tastes, kind, considerate, and forbearing ; but to 

each other hasty, careless, and cold. Conjugal 

love often seems to die out before parental love. 

It ought not so to be. Husband and wife should 

each stand first in the other's estimation. They 

have no right to foro^et each other's comfort, con- 
es o ' 

venience, sensitiveness, tastes, or happiness, in 
those of their children. Nothing can discharge 
them from the obligations which they are under to 
each other. But if a woman lets herself become 
shabby, drudgy, and commonplace as a wife, in 
her efforts to be perfect as a mother, can she ex- 
pect to retain the consideration that is due to the 
wife ? Not a man in the world but would rather 
see his wife tidy, neat, and elegant in her attire, 
easy and assured in her bearing, intelligent and 
vivacious in her talk, than the contrary ; and if 
she neglect these things, ought she to be surprised 
if he turns to fresh woods and pastures new for 
the diversion and entertainment which he seeks in 
vain at home ? This is quaky ground, but I know 
where I am, and I am not afraid. I don't expect 
men or women to say that they agree with me, but 
I am rifi-ht for all that. Let us brincr our common 
sense to bear on this point, and not be fooled by 
reiteration. Cause and effect obtain here as else- 
where. If you add two and two, the result is four, 
however much you may try to blink it. People 



A SPASM OF SENSE. 289 

do not always tell lies, when they are telling what 
is not the truth ; but falsehood is still disastrous. 
Men. and women think they believe a thousand 
things which they do not believe ; but as long as 
they think so, it is just as bad as if it were so. 
Men talk — and women listen and echo — about 
the overpowering loveliness and charm of a young 
mother surrounded by her blooming family, minis- 
tering to their wants and absorbed in their welfare, 
sell-denying and self-forgetful ; and she is lovely 
and charming ; but if this is all, it is little more 
than the charm and loveliness of a picture. It is 
not magnetic and irresistible. It has the semblance, 
but not the smell of life. It is pretty to look at, 
but it is not vigorous for command. Her husband 
will have a certain kind of admiration and love. 
Her wish will be law within a certain very limited 
sphere ; but beyond that he will not take her into 
his counsels and confidence. A woman nmst make 
herself obvious to her husband, or he will drift out 
beyond her horizon. She will be to him very nearly 
what she wills and works to be. If she adapts her- 
self to her children, and does not. adapt herself to 
her husband, he will fall into the arrangement, and 
the two will fall apart. I do not mean that they 
will quarrel, but they will lead separate lives. 
They will be no longer husband and wife. There 
will be a domestic alliance, but no marriage. A 
predominant interest in the same objects binds 
them together after a fashion : but marriage is 

13 S 



290 A SPASM OF SENSE. 



! 



something beyond that. If a woman wishes and 
purposes to be the friend of her husband, — if she 
would be valuable to him, not simply as the nurse 
of his children and the directress of his household, 
but as a woman fresh and fair and fascinating, — 
to him intrinsically lovely and attractive, — she 
should make an effort for it. It is not by any 
means a thing that comes of itself, or that can be 
left to itself. She must read, and observe, and 
think, and rest up to it. Men, as a general thing, 
will not tell you so. They talk about having the 
slippers ready, and enjoin women to be domestic. 
But men are blockheads, — dear, and affectionate, 
and generous blockheads, — benevolent, large- 
hearted, and chivalrous, — kind, and patient, and 
hard-working, — but stupid where women are con- 
cerned. Indispensable and delightful as they are 
in real life, — pleasant and comfortable as women 
actually find them, — not one in ten thousand but 
makes a dunce of himself the moment he opens his 
mouth to theorize about women. Besides, they 
have " an axe to grind." The pretty things they 
inculcate — slippers, and coffee, and care, and 
courtesy — ought indeed to be done, but the others 
ought not to be left undone. And to the former 
women seldom need to be exhorted. They take to 
them naturally. A great many more women fret 
boorish husbands with fond little attentions than 
wound appreciative ones by. neglect. Women do- 
mesticate themselves to death already. What they 



A SPASM OF SENSE. 291 

want is cultivation. They need to be stimulated 
to develop a large, comprehensive, catholic life, in 
which their domestic duties shall have an appro- 
priate niche, and not dwindle down to a narroAV 
and servile one, over which those duties shall 
spread and occupy the whole space. 

This mistake is the foundation of a world of 
wretchedness and ruin. I can see Satan standing 
at the mother's elbow. He follows her around into 
the nursery and the kitchen. He tosses up the 
babies and the omelets, delivers dutiful harangues 
about the inappropriateness of the piano and the 
library, and grins fiendishly in his sleeve at the 
wreck he is making, — a wreck not necessarily of 
character, but of happiness ; for I suppose Satan 
has so bad a disposition, that, if he cannot do all 
the harm he would wish, he will still do all he can. 
It is true that there are thousands of good men 
married to fond and foolish women, and they are 
both happy. Well, the fond and foolish women 
are very fortunate. They have fallen into hands 
that will entreat them tenderly, and they will not 
perceive any lack. Nor are the noble men wholly 
unfortunate, in that they have not taken to their 
hearts shrews. But this is not marriao;e. 

There are women less foolish. They see their 
husbands attracted in other directions more often 
and more easily than in theirs. They have too 
much sterling worth and profound faith to be vul- 
garly jealous. They fear nothing like shame or 



292 -4 SPASM OF SENSE. 

cnme ; but they feel the fact that their own pre- 
occuj]^ion with homely household duties precludes 
real companionship, the interchange of emotions, 
thoughts, sentiments, — a living, and palpable, and 
vivid contact of mind with mind, of heart with 
heart. They see others whose leisure ministers to 
grace, accomplishments, piquancy, and attractive- 
ness, and the moth flies towards the light by his 
own nature. Because he is a wise, and virtuous, 
and honorable moth, he does not dart into the 
flame. He does not even scorch his wings. He 
never thinks of such a thing. He merely circles 
around the pleasant light, sunning himself in it 
without much thought one way or another, only 
feeling that it is pleasant ; but meanwhile Mrs. 
Moth sits at home in darkness, mending the chil- 
dren's clothes, which is not exhilarating. Many a 
woman who feels that she possesses her husband's 
aff'ection misses something. She does not secure 
his fervor, his admiration. His love is honest and 
solid, but a httle dormant, and therefore dull. It 
does not brace, and tone, and stimulate. She 
wants not the love only, but the keenness, and 
edge, and flavor of the love ; and she suffers un- 
told pangs. I know it, for I have seen it. It is 
not a thing to be uttered. Most women do not 
admit it even to themselves ; but it is revealed by 
a lift of the eyelash, by a quiver of the eye, by a 
tone of the voice, by a trick of the finger. 

But what is the good of saying all this, if a 



A SPASM OF SENSE. 293 

woman cannot help herself? The children must 
be seen to, and the work must be done, and after 
that she has no time left. The '' mother of a 
young and increasing family," with her ^' pale, 
thin face and feeble step," and her '^multiplied 
and wearying cares," is " completely worn down 
with so many children." She has neither time nor 
spirit for self-culture, beyond what she may obtain 
in the nursery. What satisfaction is there in 
proving that she is far below where she ought to 
be, if inexorable circumstance prevent her from 
climbing higher? What use is there in telling 
her that she will alienate her husband and injure 
her children by her course, when there is no other 
course for her to pursue? What can she do 
about it ? 

There is one thing that she need not do. She 
need not sit down and write a book, affirming that 
it is the most glorious and desirable condition im- 
aginable. She need not lift up her voice and de- 
clare that " she lives above the ills and disquietudes 
of her condition, in an atmosphere of love and 
peace and pleasure far beyond the storms and con- 
flicts of this material life." Who ever heard of 
the mother of a young and increasing family living 
in an atmosphere of peace, not to say pleasure, 
above conflicts and storms ? Who does not know 
that the private history of families with the 
ordinary allowance of brains is a record of recur- 
ring internecine warfare? If she said less, we 



I 



294 A SPASM OF SENSE. 

might "believe lier. When she says so much, we 
cannot help suspecting. To make the best of any- 
thing, it is not necessary to declare that it is the 
best thing. Children must be taken care of, but 
it is altogether probable that there are too many 
of them. Some people think that opinion several 
times more atrocious than murder in the first de- 
gree ; but I see no atrocity in it. I think there 
is an immense quantity of nonsense about, re- 
garding this thing. I believe in Malthus, — a 
great deal more than Malthus did himself. The 
prosperity of a country is often measured by its 
population ; but quite likely it should be taken 
in inverse ratio. I certainly do not see why the 
mere multiplication of the species is so indica- 
tive of prosperity. Mobs are not so altogether 
lovely that one should desire their indefinite in- 
crease. A village is honorable, not according to 
the number, but the character of its residents. 
The drunkards and the paupers and the thieves 
and the idiots rather diminish than increase its 
respectability. It seems to me that the world 
would be greatly benefited by thinning out. Most 
of the places that I have seen would be much im- 
proved by being decimated, not to say quinqueted 
or bisected. If people are stubborn and rebellious, 
stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, 
the fewer of them the better. A small population, 
trained to honor and virtue, to liberality of culture 
and breadth of view, to self-reHance and self-re- 



A SPASM OF SENSE. 295 

spect, is a thousand times better than an over- 
crowded one with everything at loose ends. As 
with the village, so with the family. There ought 
to be no more children than can be healthily and 
thoroughly reared, as regards the moral, physical, 
and intellectual nature both of themselves and 
their parents. All beyond this is wrong and dis- 
astrous. I know of no greater crime than to give 
life to souls, and then degrade them, or suffer them 
to be degraded. Children are the poor man's 
blessing and Cornelia's jewels, just so long as Cor- 
nelia and the poor man can make adequate pro- 
vision for them. But the ragged, filthy, squalid, 
unearthly little wretches that wallow before the 
poor man's shanty-door are the poor man's shame 
and curse. The sickly, sallow, sorrowful little 
ones, shadowed too early by Hfe's cares, are some- 
thing other than a blessing. When Comeh'a finds 
her children too many for her, when her step 
trembles and her cheek fades, when the sparkle 
dies on her chalice-brim and her salt has lost its 
eavor, her jewels are Tarpeian jewels. One child 
educated by healthy and happy parents is better 
than seven dragging their mother into the grave, 
notwithstanding the unmeasured reprobation of 
our little book. Of course, if they can stand 
seven, very well. Seven and seventy times seven, 
if you like, only let them be buds, not blights. 
If we obeyed the laws of God, children would be 
like spring blossoms. They would impart as much 



296 A SPASM OF SENSE. 

freshness and strength as they abstract. They are 
a natural institution, and Nature is eminently 
healthy. But when they " come crowding into 
the home-nest," as our book d?intily says, they 
are unnatural. God never meant the home-nest 
to be crowded. There is room enough and elbow- 
room enough in the world for everything that 
ought to be in it. The moment there is crowding, 
you may be sure something wrong is going on. 
Either a bad thing is happening, or too much of a 
good thing, which counts up just the same. The 
parents begin to repair the evil by a greater one. 
They attempt to patch their own rents by dilapi- 
dating their children. They recruit their own 
exhausted energies by laying hold of the young 
energies around them, and older children are 
wearied, and fretted, and deformed in figure and 
temper by the care of younger children. Tliis is 
horrible. Some care and task and responsibility 
are good for a child's own development; but care 
and toil and labor laid upon children beyond what 
is best for their own character is intolerable and 
inexcusable oppression. Parents have no right to 
lighten their own burdens by imposing them upon 
the children. The poor things had nothing to do 
with being born. They came into the world with- 
out any volition of their own. Their existence 
began only to serve the pleasure or the pride of 
others. It was a culpable cruelty, in the first place, 
to introduce them into a sphere where no adequate 



A SPASM OF SENSE. 297 

provision could be made for their comfort and cul- 
ture; but to shoulder them, after they get here, 
with the load which belongs to their parents is out- 
rageous. Earth is not a paradise at best, and at 
worst it is very near the other place. The least we 
can do is to make the way as smooth as possible 
for the new-comers. There is not the least dan- 
ger that it will be too smooth. If you stagger 
under the weight which you have imprudently 
assumed, stagger. But don't be such an unuttera- 
ble coward as to illumine your own life by darken- 
ing the young lives which sprang from yours. I 
often wonder that children do not open their 
mouths and curse the father that begat and the 
mother that bore them. I often wonder that 
parents do not tremble lest the cry of the children 
whom they oppress go up into the ears of the 
Lord of Sabaoth, and bring down wrath upon 
their guilty heads. It was well that God planted 
fihal affection and reverence as an instinct in the 
human breast. If it depended upon reason, it 
would have but a precarious existence. 

I wish women would have the sense and cour- 
age, — I will not say, to say what they think, for 
that is not always desirable, — but to think ac- 
cording to the facts. They have a strong desire 
to please men, which is quite right and natural ; 
but in their eagerness to do this, they sometimes 
forget what is due to themselves. To tliink namby- 
pambyism for the sake of pleasing men is running 

13* 



298 A SPASM OF SENSE. 

benevolence into the ground. Not that women con- 
sciously do this, but they do it. They don't mean 
to pander to false masculine notions, but they do. 
They don't know that they are pandering to them, 
but they are. Men say silly things, partly because 
they don't know any better, and partly because they 
don't want any better. They are strong, and can 
generally make shift to bear their end of the pole 
without being crushed. So they are tolerably con- 
tent. They are not very much to blame. People 
cannot be expected to start on a crusade against 
ills of which they have but a vague and cloudy 
conception. The edge does not cut them, and 
so they think it is not much of a sword after all. 
But women have, or ought to have, a more subtile 
and intimate acquaintance with realities. They 
ought to know what is fact and what is fol-de-roL 
They ought to distinguish between the really noble 
and the simply physical, not to say faulty. If men 
do not, it is women's duty to help them. I think, 
if women would only not be quite so afraid of 
being thought 'unwomanly, they would be a great 
deal more womanly than they are. To be brave, 
and single-minded, and discriminating, and judi- 
cious, and clear-sighted, and self-reliant, and deci- 
sive, that is pure womanly. To be womanish is 
not to be womanly. To be flabby, and plastic, and 
weak, and acquiescent, and insipid, is not womanly. 
And I could wish sometimes that women would 
not be quite so patient. They often exhibit a 



A SPASM OF SENSE. 299 

degree of long-sufFering entirely unwarrantable. 
There is no use in suffering, unless you cannot 
help it ; and a good, stout, resolute protest would 
often be a great deal more wise, and Christian, 
and beneficial on all sides, than so much patient 
endurance. A little spirit and " spunk " would go 
a great way towards setting the world right. It is 
not necessary to be a' termagant. The firmest will 
and the stoutest heart may be combined with the 
gentlest delicacy. Tameness is not the stuff that 
the finest women are made of. Nobody can be 
more kind, considerate, or sympathizing towards 
weakness or weariness than men, if they only 
know it exists ; and it is a wrong to them to go 
•on bolstering them up in their bungling opinions, 
when a few sensible ideas, wisely administered, 
would do so much to enlighten them, and reveal 
the path which needs only to be revealed to secure 
their unhesitating entrance upon it. It is absurd 
to suppose that unvarying acquiescence is neces- 
sary to secure and retain their esteem, and that a 
frank avowal of differing opinions, even if they 
were wrong, would work its forfeiture. A respect 
held on so frail a tenure were little worth. But it 
is not so. I believe that manhood and womanhood 
are too truly hannonious to need iron bands, too 
truly noble to require the props of falsehood. 
Truth, simple and sincere, without partiality and 
without hypocrisy, is the best food for both. If 
any are to be found on either side too weak to 



300 A SPASM OF SENSE. 

administer or digest it, the remedy is not to mix 
it with folly or falsehood, for they are poisons, 
but to strengthen the organisms with wholesome 
tonics, — not undiluted, perhaps, but certainly un- 
adulterated. 

O Edmund Sparkler, you builded better than 
you knew, when you reared eulogiums upon the 
woman with no nonsense about her. 




» 



Camilla's Concert, 



-cSo®» 



I 



I 




Camilla's Concert. 



, WHO labor under the suspicion of not 
knowing the difference between " Old 
Hundred" and "Old Dan Tucker," — 
I, whose every attempt at music, though 
only the humming of a simple household melody, 
has, from my earliest childhood, been regarded as 
a premonitory symptom of epilepsy, or, at the very 
least, hysterics, to be treated with cold water, the 
bellows, and an unmerciful beating between my 
shoulders, — I, who can but with much difficulty 
and many a retrogression make my way among 
the olden mazes of tenor, alto, treble, bass, and 
who stand " clean daft " in the resoundino; confu- 
sion of andante, soprano, falsetto, palmetto, pianis- 
simo, akimbo, I'allegro, and il penseroso, — I was 
bidden to Camilla's concert, and, like a sheep to 
the slaughter, I went. 

He bears a great loss and sorrow who has '• no 
ear for music." Into one great garden of delights 
he may not go. There needs no flaming sword to 



804 CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 

bar the way, since for him there is no gate called 
Beautiful which he should seek to enter. Blunted 
and stolid he stumbles through life for whom its 
harp-strings vainly quiver. Yet, on the other 
hand, what does he not gain ? He loses the con- 
cord of sweet sounds, but he is spared the discord 
of harsh noises. For the surges of bewildering 
harmony and the depths of dissonant disgust, he 
stands on the levels of perpetual peace. You are 
distressed, because in yonder well-trained orchestra 
a single voice is pitched one sixteenth of a note 
} too high. For me, I lean out of my window on . 
summer nights enraptured over the organ-man 
, who turns poor lost Lilian Dale round and round 
I with his inexorable crank. It does not disturb me 
that his organ wheezes and sputters and grunts. 
Indeed, there is for me absolutely no wheeze, no 
sputter, no grunt. I only see dark eyes of Italy, 
her olive face, and her gemmed and lustrous hair. 
You mutter maledictions on the infernal noise and 
caterwauling. I hear no caterwauling, but the 
river-god of Arno ripples soft songs in the summer- 
tide to the lilies that bend above him. It is the 
guitar of the cantatrice that murmurs through the 
scented, dewy air, — the cantatrice with the laurel 
yet green on her brow, gliding over the molten 
moonlit water-ways of Venice, and dreamily chim- 
ing her well-pleased lute with the plash of the 
oars of the gondolier. It is the chant of the 
flower-girl with large eyes shining under the palm- 



CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 305 

branches in the market-place of Milan ; and with 
the distant echoing notes come the sweet breath 
of her violets and the unquenchable odors of her 
crushed geraniums borne on many a white sail 
from the glorified Adriatic. Bronzed cheek and 
swart brow under my window, I shall by and by 
throw you a paltry nickel cent for your tropical 
dreams ; meanwhile tell me, did the sun of Dante's 
Florence give your blood its fierce flow and the 
tawny hue to your bared and brawny breast ? Is 
it the rage of Tasso's madness that burns in your 
uplifted eyes ? Do you take shelter from the 
fervid noon under the cypresses of Monte Mario ? 
Will you meet queenly Marguerite with myrtle 
wreath and myrtle fragrance, as she wanders 
through the chestnut vales ? Will you sleep to- 
night between the colonnades under the golden 
moon of Napoli ? Go back, O child of the Mid- 
land Sea ! Go out from this cold shore, that yields 
but crabbed harvests for your threefold vintages of 
Italy. Go, suck the sunshine from Seville oranges 
under the elms of Posilippo. Go, watch the 
shadows of the vines swaying in the malberry- 
trees from Epomeo's gales. Bind the ivy in a 
triple crown above Blanca's comely hair, and pipe 
not so wailingly to the Vikings of this frigid Norse- 
land. 

But Italy, remember, my frigid Norseland has a 
heart of fire in her bosom beneath its overlying 
snows, before which yours dies like the white sick 



306 CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 

hearth-flame before the noonday sun. Passion, 
but not compassion, is here " cooled a long age in 
the deep-delved earth." We lure our choristers 
with honeyed words and gentle ways : you lay 
your sweetest songsters on the gridiron. Our 
orchards ring with the full-throated happiness of 
a thousand birds : your pomegranate groves are 
silent, and your miserable cannibal kitchens would 
tell the reason why, if outraged spits could speak. 
Go away, therefore, from my window, Giuseppe ; 
the air is growing damp and chilly, and I do not 
sleep in the shadows of broken temples. 

Yet I love music ; not as you love it, my friend, 
with intelligence, discrimination, and delicacy, but 
in a dull, woodeny way, as the " gouty oaks " loved 
it, when they felt in their fibrous frames the stir of 
Amphion's lyre, and " floundered into hornpipes " ; 
as the gray, stupid rocks loved it, when they came 
rolling heavily to his feet to listen ; in a great, 
coarse, clumsy, ichthyosaurian way, as the rivers 
loved sad Orpheus's wailing tones, stopping in 
their mighty courses, and the thick-hided hippo- 
potamus dragged himself up from the unheeded 
pause of the waves, dimly thrilled with a vague 
ecstasy. The confession is sad, yet only in such 
beastly fashion come sweetest voices to me, — not 
in the fulness of all their vibrations, but sounding 
dimly through many an earthly layer. Music I do 
not so much hear as feel. All the exquisite nerves 
that bear to your soul these tidings of heaven in 



CAMILLA'S CONCERT, 307 

me He torpid or dead. No beatitude travels to my 
heart over that road. But as sometimes an invalid, 
unable through mortal sickness to swallow his 
needed nutriment, is yet kept alive many days by 
being immersed in a bath of wine and milk, which 
somehow, through unwonted courses, penetrates to 
the sources of vitality, — so I, though the natural 
avenues of sweet sounds have been hermetically 
sealed, do yet receive the fine flow of the musical 
ether. I feel the flood of harmony pouring around 
me. An inward, palpable, measured tremulous- 
ness of the subtile secret essence of life attests the 
presence of some sweet disturbing cause, and, borne 
on unseen Avings, I mount to loftier heights and 
diviner airs. 

So I Avas comforted for my waxed ears and 
Camilla's concert. 

There is one other advantage in being possessed 
with a deaf-and-dumb devil, which, now that I am 
on the subject of compensation, I may as well 
mention. You are left out of the arena of fierce 
discussion and debate. You do not enter upon the 
lists wherefrom you would be sure to come ofl" 
discomfited. Of all reputations, a musical rep- 
utation seems the most shifting and uncertain ; 
and of all rivalries, musical rivalries are the most 
prolific of heart-burnings and discomfort. Now, ' 
if I should sing or play, I should w^ish to sing and 
play well. But what is well ? Nancie in the vil- 
lage " singing-seats " stands head and shoulders 



808 CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 

above the rest, and wears her honors tranquilly, — 
an authority at all rehearsals and serenades. But 
Anabella comes up from the town to spend Thanks- 
giving, and, without the least mitigation or remorse 
of voice, absolutely drowns out poor Nancie, who 
goes under, giving many signs. Yet she dies not 
unavenged, for Harriette sweeps down from the 
city, and immediately suspends the victorious An- 
abella from her aduncate nose, and carries all 
before her. Mysterious is the arrangement of the 
world. The last round of the ladder is not yet 
reached. To Madame Morlot, Harriette is a sav- 
age, une hete^ without cultivation. " Oh, the 
dismal little fright ! a thousand years of study 
would be useless ; go, scour the floors ; she has 
positively no voice." No voice, Madame Morlot ? 
Harriette, no voice, — who burst every ear-drum 
in the room last night with her howling and hoot- 
ing, and made the stoutest heart tremble with 
fearful forebodings of what might come next ? 
But Madame Morlot is not infallible, for Herr 
Driesbach sits shiverino; at the dreadful noises 
which Madame Morlot extorts from his sensitive 
and suffering piano, and at the necessity which lies 
upon him to go and congratulate her upon her per- 
formance. Ah ! if his tortured conscience might 
but congratulate her and himself upon its close ! 
And so the scale ascends. Hills on hills and Alps 
on Alps arise, and who shall mount the ultimate 
peak till all the world shall say, " Here reigns the 



CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 309 

Excellence" ? I listen with pleasure to untutored 
Nancie till Anabella takes all the wind from her 
sails. I think the force of music can no further go 
than Madame Morlot, and, behold, Herr Driesbach 
has knocked out that underpinning. I am bewil- 
dered, and I say, helplessly, ••' What shall I admire 
and be a la modeV^ But if it is so disheartening 
to me, who am only a passive listener, what must 
be the agonies of the dramatis per sonce? " Hang 
it !" says Charles Lamb, " how I like to be liked, 
and what I do to be liked ! " And do Nancie, 
Harriette, and Herr Driesbach like it any less ? 
What shall avenge them for their spretoe injuria 
formcef What can repay the hapless performer, 
who has performed her very best, for learning by 
terrible, indisputable indirections that her cherished 
and boasted Cremona is but a very second fiddle ? 

So, standincr on the hio;h £;round of certain im- 
munity from criticism and hostile judgment, I do 
not so much console myself as I do not stand in 
need of consolation. I rather give thanks for my 
mute and necessarily unoffending lips, and I shall 
go in great good-humor to Camilla's concert. 

There are many different ways of going to a 
concert. You can be one of a party of fashionable 
people to whom music is a diversion, a pastime, an 
agreeable change from the assembly or the theatre. 
They applaud, they condemn, they criticise. They 
know all about it. Into such company as this, even 
I, whose poor old head is always getting itself 



310 CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 

wedged in where it has no business to be, have 
chanced to be thrown. This is torture. My 
cue is to turn into the Irishman's echo, which 
always returned for his '' How d' ye do ? " a 
*' Pretty well, thank you." I cling to the skirts 
of that member of the party who is agreed to have 
the best taste and echo his responses an octave 
higher. If he sighs at the end of a song, I bring 
out my pocket-handkerchief. If he says " charm- 
ing," I murmur "delicious." If he thinks it 
" exquisite," I pronounce it " enchanting." Where 
he is rapt in admiration, I go into a trance, and so 
shamble through the performances, miserable im- 
postor that I am, and ten to one nobody finds 
out tliat I am a dunce, fit for treason, stratagem, 
and spoils. It is a great strain upon the mental 
powers, but it is wonderful to see how much may 
be accomplished, and what skill may be attained, 
by long practice. 

Also one may go to a concert as a conductor 
with a single musical friend. By conductor I do 
not mean escort, but a magnetic conductor, rap- 
ture conductor, a fit medium through which to 
convey away his delight, so that he shall not be- 
come surcharged and explode. He does not take 
,you for your pleasure, nor for his own, but for use. 
He desires some one to whom he can from time to 
time express his opinions and his enthusiasm, sure 
of an attentive listener, — since nothing is so 
pleasant as to see one's views welcomed. Now 



CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 811 

you cannot pretend that in such a case your listen- 
ing is thoroughly honest. You are receptive of 
theories, criticisms, and reminiscences ; but vou 
would not like to be obliged to pass an examina- 
tion on them afterwards. You do, it must be 
confessed, sometimes, in the midst of eloquent 
dissertations, strike out into little flowery by-paths 
of your own, quite foreign to the grand paved- 
ways along which your friend supposes he is so 
kind as to be leading you. But however digres- 
sive your mind may be, do not suffer your eyes to 
digress. Whatever may be the intensity of your 
ennui, endeavor to preserve an animated expres- 
sion, and your success is complete. This is all 
that is necessary. You will never be called upon 
for notes or comments. Your little escapades will 
never be detected. It is not your opinions that 
were sought, nor your education that was to be 
furthered. You were only an escape-pipe, and 
your mission ceased when the soul of song fled 
and the gas was turned off. This, too, is all that 
can justly be demanded. Minister, lecturer, sing- 
er, no one has any right to ask of his audience 
anything more than opportunity, — the externals 
of attention. All the rest is his own look-out. 
If you prepossess your mind with a theme, jou do 
not give him an even chance. You must offer 
him in the beginning a tabula rasa, — a fair field, 
and then it is his business to go in and w^in your 
attention ; and if he cannot, let him pay the costs, 
for the fault is his own. 



312 CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 

This also is torture, but its name is Zoar, a lit- 
tle one. 

There is yet another way. You may go with 
one or many who believe in individuality. They 
go to the concert for love of music, — negatively 
for its rest and refreshment, positively for its em- 
bodied delights. They take you for your enjoy- 
ment, which they permit you to compass after your 
own fashion. They force from you no comment. 
They demand no criticism. They do not require 
censure as your certificate of taste. . They do not 
trouble themselves with your demeanor. If you 
choose to talk in the pauses, they are receptive 
and cordial. If you choose to be silent, it is just 
as well. If you go to sleep, they will not mind, — 
unless, under the spell of the genius of the place, 
your sleep becomes vocal, and you involuntarily 
join the concert in the undesirable rdle of De Trop. 
If you go into raptures, it is all the same ; you 
are not watched and made a note of. They leave 
you at the top of your bent. Whether you shall 
be amused, delighted, or disgusted, they respect 
your decisions and allow you to remain free. 

How did I go to my concert ? Can I tell for 
the e3^es that made " a sunshine in the shady 
place " ? Was I not veiled with the beautiful hair, 
and blinded with the lily's white splendor ? So 
went I with the Fairy Queen in her golden coach 
drawn by six white mice, and, behold, I was in 
Camilla's concert-room. 



CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 313 

It is to be a fiddle affair. Now I am free to 
gay, if there is anything I hate, it is a fiddle. ^ 
Hide it away under as many Italian coatings as 
j you choose, viol, violin, viola, violone, violoncello, 
ij violoncellettissimo, at bottom it is all one, a fiddle ; 
y in its best estate, a whirligig, without dignity, senti- 
I ment, or power ; and at worst a rubbing, rasping, 
! squeaking, wooUeny, noisy nuisance, that it sets 
I my teeth on edge to think of. I shudder at the 
I mere memory of the reluctant bow dragging its 
I slow length across the whining strings. And here 
I am, in my sober senses, come to hear a fiddle ! 
But it is Camilla's. Do you remember a little 
' girl who, a few years ago, became famous for her 
wonderful performance on the violin? At six 
I years of age she went to a great concert, and of all 
' the fine instruments there, the unseen spirit within 
: her made choice, "Papa, I should like to learn the 
i violin." So she learned it and loved it, and when 
ten years old delighted foreign and American au- 
diences with her marvellous genius. It was the 
little Camilla who now, after ten years of silence, 
j tuned her beloved instrument once more. 

As she walks softly and quietly in, I am con- 
scious of a disappointment. I had unwittingly 
framed for her an aesthetic violin, with the essen- 
tial strings and bridge and bow indeed, but sub- 
merged and forgot in such Orient splendors as 
befit her glorious genius. Barbaric pearl and 
gold, finest carved work, flashing gems from In- 

14 



814 CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 

dian watercourses, the delicatest pink sea-shell, a 
bubble-prism caught and crystallized, — of all rare 
and curious substances wrought with dainty de- 
vice, fantastic as a dream, and resplendent as the 
light, should her instrument be fashioned. Only 
in " something rich and strange " should the mys- 
tic soul lie sleeping for whom her lips shall break 
the spell of slumber, and her young fingers unbar 
the sacred gates. And, oh me ! it is, after all, 
the very same old red fiddle ! Dee, dee ! 

But she neither glides nor trips nor treads, as 
heroines invariably do, but walks in like a good 
Christian woman. She steps upon the stage and 
faces the audience that gives her hearty greeting 
and waits the prelude. There is time for cool sur- 
vey. I am angry still about the red fiddle, and I 
look scrutinizingly at her dress, and think how ugly 
is the mode. The skirt is white silk, — a brocade, 
I believe, — at any rate, stiff, and, though probably 
full to overflowing in the hands of the seamstress, 
who must compress it within prescribed limits 
about the waist, looks scanty and straight. Why 
should she not, she who comes before us to-night, 
not as a fashion, but an inspiration, — why should 
she not assume that immortal classic drapery whose 
graceful falls and folds the sculptor vainly tries to 
imitate, the painter vainly seeks to limn ? When 
Corinne tuned her lyre at the Capitol, when she 
knelt to be crowned with her laurel crown at the 
hands of a Roman senator, is it possible to conceive 



CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 315 

flher swollen out with crinoline? And yet I re- 
L member, that, though sa rohe etait blanche, et son 
'•[costume etait tres pittoresque, it was sans s^e carter 
cependant assez des usages remits pour que Von 2jut y 
trouver de V affectation ; and I suppose, if one should 
now suddenly collapse from conventional rotundity 
jto antique statuesqueness, the great " oti " would 
I very readily "^ trouver de V affectation.''^ Never- 
,'theless, though one must dress in Rome as Romans 
do, and though the Roman way of dressing is, 
taking all things into the account, as good as any, 
and, if not more graceful, a thousand times more 
[[convenient, wholesome, comfortable, and manage- 
: able than Helen's, still It does seem that, when 
one steps out of the ordinary area of Roman life 
jand assumes an abnormal position, one might, 
without violence, assume temporarily an abnormal 
dress, and refresh our dilated eyes once more with 
flowing, wavy outlines. Music is one of the eter- 
nities : why should not its accessories be ? Why 
. should a discord disturb the eye, when only con- 
cords delIo;ht the ear ? 
tj But I lift my eyes from Camilla's unpliant 
• drapery to the red red rose in her hair, and thence, 
; naturally, to her silent face, and .in that instant 
, ugly dress and red red rose fade out of my sight. 
' What is it that I see, with tearful tenderness and 
:; a nameless pain at the heart ? A young face deep- 
\ ened and draw^n with suffering ; dark, large eyes, 
whose natural laughing light has been quenched 



316 CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 

in tears, yet shining still with a distant gleam 
caught from the eternal fires. O still, pathetic 
face ! A sterner form than Time has passed and 
left his vestige there. Happy little girl, playing 
among the flickering shadows of the Rhine-land, 
who could not foresee the darker shadows that 
should settle and never lift nor flicker from her 
heavy heart? Large, lambent eyes, that might 
have been sweet, but now are only steadfast, — 
that may yet be sweet, when they look to-night 
into a baby's cradle, but gazing now upon a wait- 
ing audience, are only steadfast. Ah ! so it is. 
Life has such hard conditions, that every dear 
and precious gift, every rare virtue, every pleas- 
ant facility, every genial endowment, love, hope, 
joy, wit, sprightliness, benevolence, must some- 
times be cast into the crucible to distil the one 
elixir, patience. Large, lambent eyes. In which 
days and nights of tears are petrified, steadfast 
eyes that are neither mournful nor hopeful nor 
anxious, but with such unvoiced sadness in their 
depths that the hot tears well up in my heart, 
what do you see In the waiting audience ? Not 
censure, nor pity, nor forgiveness, for you do not 
need them, — but surely a warm human sympa- 
thy, since heart can speak to heart, though the 
thin, fixed lips have sealed their secret w^ell. Sad 
mother, whose rose of life \ttas crushed before It 
had budded, tender young lips that had drunk 
the cup of sorrow to the dregs, while their cup of 



CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 317 

bliss should hardly yet be brimmed for life's sweet 
spring-time, your crumbling fanes and broken 
arches and prostrate columns lie not among the 
ruins of Time. Be comforted of that. They 
bear witness of a more pitiless Destroyer, and by 

!this token I know there shall dawn a brighter day. 

■ The God of the fatherless and the widow, of the 

'worse than w^idowed and fatherless, the Avenger 

[of the Slaughter of the Innocents, be wdth you, 

' and shield and shelter and bless ! 

But the overture wavers to its close, and her 

f soul hears far off the voice of the coming Spirit. 
A deeper light shines in the strangely introverted 
eyes, — the look as of one listening intently to 

' a distant melody which no one else can hear, — 
the look of one to whom the room and the people 
and the presence are but a dream, and past and 

' future centre on the far-off song. Slowly she 
raises her instrument. I almost shudder to see 
the tawny wood touching her white shoulder ; 
yet that cannot be common or unclean which she 
so loves and carries with almost a caress. Still 
intent, she raises the bow with a slow sweep, as 
if it w^ere a wand of divination. Nearer and 
nearer comes the heavenly voice, pouring around 
her a flood of mystic melody. And now at last 
it breaks upon our ears, — softly at first, only a 
sweet faint echo from that other sphere, but deep- 
ening, strengthening, conquering, — now rising on 
the swells of a controlling passion, now sinking 



318 CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 

into the depths witli its low wail of pain ; exul- 
tant, scornful, furious, in the glad outburst of 
opening joy and the fierce onslaught of strength ; 
crowned, sceptred, glorious in garland and sing- 
ing-robes, throned in the high realms of its in- 
heritance, a kingdom of boundless scope and ever 
new delights : then sweeping down through the 
lower world with diminishing rapture, rapture 
lessening into astonishment, astonishment dying 
into despair, it gathers up the passion and the 
pain, the blight and woe and agony ; all garnered 
joys are scattered. Evil supplants the good. Hope 
dies, love pales, and faith is faint and wan. But 
every death has its moaning ghost, pale spectre 
of vanished loves. Oh, fearful revenge of the 
outraged soul ! The mysterious, uncomprehend- 
ed, incomprehensible soul ! The irrepressible, un- 
quenchable, immortal soul, whose every mark is 
everlasting ! Every secret sin committed against 
it cries out from the house-tops. Cunning may 
strive to conceal, will may determine to smother, 
love may fondly whisper, " It does not hurt " ; 
but the soul will not be outraged. Somewhere, 
somehow, when and where you least expect, un- 
conscious, perliaps, to its owner, unrecognized by 
the many, visible only to the clear vision, some- 
where, somehow, the soul bursts asunder its bonds. 
It is but a little song, a tripping of the fingers 
over the keys, a drawing of the bow across the 
strings, — only that ! Only that ? It is the pro- 



CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 319 

test of the wronged and ignored soul. It is the 
outburst of the pent and prisoned soul. All the 
ache and agony, all the secret wrong and silent 
endurance, all the rejected love and wounded 
trust and slighted truth, all the riches wasted, all 
the youth poisoned, all the hope trampled, all the 
light darkened, — all meet and mingle in a mad 
whirl of waters. They surge and lash and rage, 
a wild storm of harmony. Barriers are broken. 
Circumstance is not. The soul ! the soul ! the 
soul ! the wronged and fettered soul ! the freed 
and royal soul ! It alone is king. Lift up your 
heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting 
doors, and the King of Glory shall come in ! 
Tremble, O Tyrant, in your mountain-fastness ! 
Tremble, Deceiver, in your cavern under the 
sea ! Your victim is your accuser. Your sin has 
found you out. Your crime cries to Heaven. 
You have condemned and killed the just. You 
have murdered the innocent in secret places, and 
in the noonday sun the voice of their blood crieth 
unto God from the ground. There is no speech 
nor lancmao-e. There is no will nor desiojn. The 
seal of silence is unbroken. But unconscious, en- 
tranced, inspired, the god has lashed his Sibyl on. 
The vital instinct of the soul, its heaven-born, 
up-springing life, flings back the silver veil, and 
reveals the hidden things to him who hath eyes 
to see. 

The storm sobs and soothes itself to silence. 



320 CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 

There is a hush, and then an enthusiasm of de- 
h'ght. The small head slightly bows, the still face 
scarcely smiles, the slight form disappears, — and 
after all, it was only a fiddle. 

" When Music, heavenly maid, was young," 
begins the ode ; but Music, heavenly maid, seems 
to me still so young, so very young, as scarcely to 
have made her power felt. Her language is as 
yet unlearned. When a baby of a month is 
hungry or in pain, he contrives to make the fact 
understood. If he is at peace with himself and 
his surroundings, he leaves no doubt on the sub- 
ject. To precisely this degree of intelligibility has 
the Heavenly Maid attained among us. When 
Beethoven sat down to the composition of one of 
his grand harmonies, there was undoubtedly in his 
mind as distinct a conception of that which he 
wished to express, of that within him which clam- 
ored for expression, as ever rises before a painter's 
eye, or sings in a poet's brain. Thought, emotion, 
passion, hope, fear, joy, sorrow, each had its life 
and law. The painter paints you this. This the 
poet sings you. You stand before a picture, and 
to your loving, searching gaze its truths unfold. 
You read the poem with the understanding, and 
catch its concealed meanings. But what do you 
know of what was in Beethoven's soul ? Who 
grasps his conception ? Who faithfully renders, 
who even thoroughly knows his idea ? Here and 
there to some patient night-watcher the lofty gates 



CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 321 

are unbarred, " on golden hinges turning." But, 
for the greater part, the musician who would tell 
so much speaks to unheeding ears. We compre- 
hend him but infinitesimally. It is the Battle of 
Prague. Adrianus sits down to the piano, and 
Dion stands by his side, music-sheet in hand, act- 
ing as showman. " The cannon," says Dion, at 
the proper place, and you imagine you recognize 
reverberation. " Charge," continues Dion, and 
with a violent effort you fancy the ground trem- 
bles. " Groans of the wounded," and you are 
partly horror-struck and partly incredulous. But 
what lame representation is this ! As if one should 
tie a paper around the ankle of the Belvedere 
Apollo, with the inscription, " This is the ankle." 
A collar declares, " This is the neck." A bandeau 
locates his " forehead." A bracelet indicates the 
" arm." Is the sculpture thus significant ? Hardly 
more does our music yet signify to us. You hear 
an unfamiliar air. You like it or dislike it, or are 
indifferent. You can tell that it is slow arid plain- 
tive, or brisk and lively, or perhaps even that it is 
defiant or stirring ; but how insensible you are to 
the delicate shades of its meanino; ! How hidden 
is the song in the heart of the composer till he 
gives you the key ! You hear as though you 
heard not. You hear the thunder, and the cata- 
ract, and the crash of the avalanche ; but the song 
of the nightingale, the chirp of the katydid, the 
murmur of the waterfall never reach you. This 
14* u 



322 CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 

cannot be the ultimatum. Music must hold in 
its own bosom its own interpretation, and man 
must have in his its corresponding susceptibilities. 
Music is language, and language implies a people 
who employ and understand it. But music, even 
by its professor, is as yet faintly understood. Its 
meanings go on crutches. They must be helped 
out by words. What does this piece say to you ? 
Interpret it. You cannot. You must be taught 
much before you can know all. It must be trans- 
lated from music into speech before you can en- 
tirely assimilate it. Musicians do not trust alone 
to notes for moods. Their light shines only 
through a glass darkly. But in some other sphere, 
in some happier time, in a world where gross 
wants shall have disappeared, and therefore the 
grossness of words shall be no longer necessary, 
where hunger and thirst and cold and care and 
passion have no more admittance, and only love 
and faith and hope and admiration and aspiration 
shall crave utterance, in that blessed unseen world 
shall not music be the every-day speech, convey- 
ing meaning not only with a sweetness, but with 
an accuracy, delicacy, and distinctness, of which 
we have now but a faint conception? Here words 
are not only rough, but ambiguous. There har- 
monies shall be minutely intelligible. Speak with 
what directness we can, be as explanatory, em- 
phatic, illustrative as we may, there are mistakes, 
misunderstandings, many and grievous, and con- 



CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 323 

sequent missteps and catastrophes. But in that 
other world language shall be exactly coexistent 
with life ; music shall be precisely adequate to 
meaning. There shall be no hidden corners, no 
bungling incompatibilities, but the searching sound 
penetrates into the secret sources of the soul, all- 
pervading. Not a nook, not a crevice, no maze 
so intricate, but the sound floats in to gather up 
the fragrant aroma, to bear it yonder to another 
waiting soul, and deposit it as deftly by unerring 
magnetisms in the corresponding clefts. 

Toot aw^ay, then, fifer-fellow ! Turn your slow 
crank, inexorable Italian ! Thrum your thrums, 
Miss Laura, for Signor Bernadotti ! You are a 
long way off, but your footprints point the right 
way. With many a yawn and sigh subjective, 
with, I greatly fear me, many a malediction objec- 
tive, you are " learning the language of another 
world." To us, huddled together in our little 
ant-hill, one is " une hete^^ and one is " mon 
ange " ; but from that fixed star we are all so far 
as to have no parallax. 

But I come down from the golden stars, for the 
white-robed one has raised her w^and again, and 
we float away through the glowing gates of the 
sunrise, over the purple waves, over the vine-lands 
of sunny France, in among the shadows of tlie 
storied Pyrenees. Sorrow and sighing have fled 
away. Tragedy no longer " in sceptred pall 
comes sweeping by " ; but young lambs leap in 



324 CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 

wild frolic, silken-fleeced sheep lie on the slopes 
of the hills, and shepherd calls to shepherd from 
his mountain-peak. Peaceful hamlets lie far down 
the valley, and every gentle height blooms with 
a happy home. Dark-eyed Basque girls dance 
through the fruitful orchards. I see the gleam 
of* their scarlet scarfs wound in with their bold 
black hair. I hear their rich voices trilling the 
lays of their land, and ringing with happy laugh- 
ter. But I mount higher and yet higher, till 
gleam and voice are lost. Here the freshening 
air sweeps down, and the low gurgle of living 
water purling out from cool, dark chasms, mingles 
with the shepherd's flute. Here the young shep- 
herd himself climbs, leaping from rock to rock, 
supple, strong, brave, and free as the soul of 
his race, — the same iron in his sinews, and the 
same fire in his blood that dealt the " dolorous 
rout " to Charlemagne a thousand years ago. 
Sweetly across the path of Roncesvalles blow the 
evening gales, wafting tender messages to the 
listening girls below. Green grows the grass and 
gay the flowers that spring from the blood of 
princely paladins, the flower of chivalry. No 
bugle-blast can bring old Roland back, though it 
wind long and loud through the echoing woods. 
Lads and lasses, worthy scions of valiant stems, 
may sit on happy evenings in the shadow^ of the 
vines, or group themselves on the greensward in 
the i)auses of the dance, and sing their songs of 



CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 325 

battle and victory, — the olden legends of their 
heroic sires ; but the strain that floats down from 
the darkening slopes into their heart of hearts, the 
song that reddens in their glowing cheeks, and 
throbs in their throbbing breasts, and shines in 
their dewy eyes, is not the shock of deadly onset, 
glorious though it be. It is the sweet old song, — 
old, yet ever new, — whose burden is, 

" Come live with me and be my love," — 

old, yet always new, — sweet and tender, and not 
to be gainsaid, whether it be piped to a shepherd- 
ess in Arcadia, or whether a princess hears it from 
princely lips in her palace on the sea. 

But the mountain shadows stretch down the 
valleys and wrap the meadows in twilight. Far- 
ther and farther the notes recede as the flutesman 
gathers his quiet flock along the winding paths. 
Smooth and far in the tranquil evening-air fall the 
receding notes, a clear, silvery sweetness ; farther 
and farther in the hushed evening air, lessening 
and lowering, as you bend to listen, till the vanish- 
ing strain just cleaves, a single thread of pearl-pure 
melody, finer, finer, finer, through the dewy twi- 
light, and — you hear only your own heart-beats. 
It is not dead, but risen. It never ceased. It 
knew no pause. It has gone up the heights to 
mingle with the songs of the angels. You rouse 
yourself with a start, and gaze at your neighbor 
half bewildered. What is it? Where are we? 
Oh, my remorseful heart ! There is no shepherd, 



326 CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 

no mountain, no girl with scarlet ribbon and black 
braids bound on her beautiful temples. It was 
only a fiddle on a platform ! 

Now you need not tell me that. I know better. 
I have lived among fiddles all my life, — embry- 
otic, Silurian fiddles, splintered from cornstalks, 
that blessed me in the golden afternoons of green 
summers waving in the sunshine of long ago, — 
sympathetic fiddles that did me yeomen's service 
once, when I fell off a bag of corn up garret and 
broke my head, and the frightened fiddles, not 
knowing what else to do, came and fiddled to me 
lying on the settee, with such boundless, extrava- 
gant flourish that nobody heard the doctor's gig 
rolling by, and so sinciput and occiput were left 
overnight to compose their own quarrels, whereby 
I was naturally all right before the doctor had a 
chance at me, suffering only the slight disadvan- 
tage of going broken-headed through life. What 
I might have been with a whole skull, I don't 
know ; but I will say, that, good or bad, and even 
in fragments, my head is the best part of me. 

Yes, I think I may dare affirm that whatever 
there is to know about a fiddle I know, and I can 
give my affidavit that it is no fiddle that takes you 
up on its broad wings, outstripping the " wondrous 
horse of brass," which required 

" the space of a day natural, 
This is to sayn, four and twenty houres, 
Wher so you' list, in drought or elles showres, 



CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 327 

To beren your body into every place 
To which your herte willeth for to pace, 
Withouten wemme of you, thurgh foule or faire," — 

since it bears you, " withouten " even so much as 
your " herte's " will, in a moment's time, over the 
seas and above the stars. 

A fiddle, is it ? Do not for one moment believe 
it. — A poet walked through Southern woods, and 
the Dryads opened their hearts to him. They 
unfolded the secrets that dwell in the depths of 
forests. They sang to him under the starlight the 
songs of their green, rustling land. They whis- 
pered the loves of the trees sentient to poets : — 

" The sayling pine; the cedar, proud and tall; 
The vine-propt elme; the poplar, never dry; 
The builder oake, sole king of forrests all; 
The aspine, good for staves ; the cypresse funerall j 
The lawrell, meedof mightie conquerours 
And poets sage; the firre, that weepeth stille; 
The willow, worne of forlorne paramours ; 
The eugh, obedient to the benders will ; 
The birch, for shaftes; the sallow, for the mill; 
The mirrhe, sweete-bleeding in the bitter wounde; 
The warlike beech; the ash, for nothing ill; 
The fruitful olive ; and the platane round ; 
The carver holme; the maple, seldom inward sound." 

They sang to him with their lutes. They danced 
before him with sunny, subtile grace, wreathing 
him with strange loveliness. They brought him 
honey and wine in the wnite cups of lilies, till 
his bram was drunk with delight ; and they kept 
watch by his moss pillow, while he slept. 



828 CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 

In the dew of the morning, he arose and felled 
the kindly tree that had sheltered him, not know- 
ing it was the home of Arborine, fairest of the 
wood-nymphs. But he did it not for cruelty, but 
tenderness, to carve a memorial of his most mem- 
orable night, and so pulled down no thunders on 
his head. For Arborine loved him, and, like her 
sister Undine in the North, found her soul in 
loving him. Unseen, the beautiful nymph guided 
his hand as he fashioned the sounding viol, not 
knowing he was fashioning a palace for a soul 
new-born. He wrought skilfully, strung the in- 
tense chords, and smote them Avith the sympa- 
thetic bow. What burst of nmsic flooded the still 
air ! What new sono; trembled amonsj the mer- 
maiden tresses of the oaks ! What new presence 
quivered in every listening harebell and every 
fearful windflower ? The forest felt a change, 
for tricksy nymph had proved a mortal love, and 
put off her fairy phantasms for the deep conscious- 
ness of humanity. The wood heard, bewildered. 
A shudder as of sorrow thrilled through it. A 
breeze that was almost sad swept down the shady 
aisles as the Poet passed out into the sunshine and 
the world. 

But Nature knows no pain, though Arborines 
appear never more. A balm springs up in every 
wound. Over the hills, and far away beyond their 
utmost purple rim, and deep into the dying day, 
the happy love-born one followed her love, happy 



I 



CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 329 

to exchange her sylvan immortahty for the spasm 
of mortal life, — happy, in her human self-abnega- 
tion, to lie close on his heart and whisper close in 
his ear, though he knew only the loving voice and- 
never the loving lips. Through the world they 
passed, the Poet and his mystic viol. It gathered 
to itself the melodies that fluttered over sea and 
land, — songs of the mountains, and songs of the 
valleys, — murmurs of love, and the trumpet-tones 
of war, — bugle-blast of huntsman on the track 
of the chamois, and mother's lullaby to the baby 
at her breast. All that earth had of sweetness the 
nymph drew into her viol-home, and poured it 
forth anew in strains of more than mortal har- 
mony. The fire and fervor of human hearts, the 
quiet ripple of inland waters, the anthem of the 
stormy sea, the voices of the flowers and the birds, 
lent their melody to the song of her who knew 
them all. 

The Poet died. Died, too, sweet Arborine, 
s\^'^oning away in the fierce grasp of this stranger 
Sorrow, to enter by the black gate of death into 
the full presence and recognition of him by loving 
whom she had learned to be. 

The viol passed into strange hands, and wan- 
dered down the centuries, but its olden echoes 
linger still. Fragrance of Southern woods, cool- 
ness of shaded waters, inspiration of mountain- 
breezes, all the secret forces of Nature that the 
wood-nymph knew, and the joy, the passion, and 



330 CAMILLA'S CONCERT. 

the pain that throb only in a woman's heart, lie 
still, silent under the silent strings, but wakening 
into life at the touch of a royal hand. 

Do you not believe my story ? But I have seen 
the viol and the royal hand ! 




4 



^M§ 



Cheri 

r 



•Ch 



ERI 




HERI is the Canary-bird, — a yellow 
bird with a white tail, when the cat 
leaves him any tail at all. He came 
as a gift, and I welcomed him, but 
without gratitude. For a gift is nothing. Al- 
ways behind the gift stands the giver, and under 
the gift lies the motive. The gift itself has no 
character. It may be a blunder, a bribe, an offer- 
ing, according to the nature and design of the 
giver ; and you are outraged, or magnanimous, or 
grateful. Cheri came to me with no love-token 
under his soft wings, — only the " good riddance " 
of his heartless master. Those little black eyes had 
twinkled, those shining silken feathers had gleamed, 
that round throat had waved with melody in vain. 
He had worn his welcome out. Even the virtues 
which should have throbbed, tender and all-em- 
bracing, under priestly vestments, had no tender- 
ness, no embrace for him, — only a mockery and 
a prophecy, a cold and cynical prediction that I 



334 CHERl. 

should soon tire of his shrill voice. Yes, Cheri, 
your sweet silver trills, your rippling June-brook 
warbles, were to him only a shrew's scolding. 
I took the bird wrathfully, his name had been 
Cherry, and rechristened him on the spot Cheri, 
in anticipation of the new life that was to dawn 
upon him, no longer despised Cherry, but Cheri, 
my cherished one. 

He has been with me now nearly a year, and 
every trick of his voice and head and tail is just 
as fresh, graceful, and charming as on the first day 
of his arrival. He is a constant recreation and 
delight. I put him in my own room, and went 
up to look at him two or three times the first 
evening. Every time I looked he would be quite 
still, but his little black beads of eyes shone wide 
open in the candle-light, and I recalled how 
Chaucer's 

" Smale foules maken melodie 
That slepen alle night with open eye," 

and reflected that Cheri certainly made melodie 
enough in the daytime to be ranked with the 
poetic tribe; but one night, after he had been 
here long enough to have worn away his nervous 
excitement, I happened to go into the room very 
softly, and the black beads had disappeared. The 
tiny head had disappeared too, and only a little 
round ball of feathers was balanced on his perch. 
Then I remembered that chickens have a way 
of putting their heads in their pockets when they 



CHERL 335 

go to sleep, and poetry yielded to poultry, Cheri 
stepped out of Chaucer, and took liis place in 
the hencoop. 

He has had an eventful life since he came to 
me. In the summer I hung him on a hook under 
the piazza for the merry company of robins and 
bluebirds, which he enjoyed excessively. One 
day, in the midst of a most successful concert, an 
envious gust swept down the cage, up went the 
door, and out flew the frightened bird. I could 
have borne to lose him, but I was sure he would 
lose himself, — a tender little dilettante^ served 
like a prince all the days of his life, never having 
to lift a finger to help himself, or knowing a want 
unsatisfied. Now^, thrown suddenly upon his own 
resources, homeless, friendless, forlorn, how could 
he ever make his fortune in this bleak New Eno;- 
land, for all he has, according to Cuvier, more 
brains in his head in proportion to his size than 
any other created being? I saw him already in 
midsummer, drenched with cold rains, chilled and 
perishing ; but sharper eyes than mine had marked 
his flight, and a pair of swift hands plunged after 
him into the long grass that tangled his wings and 
kept him back from headlong destruction. 

Amicable relations between Cheri and the cat 
are on a most precarious footing. The cat w^as 
established in the house before Cheri came, — a 
lovely, frolicsome kitten, that sat in my lap, purred 
up in my face, rubbed her nose against my book, 



336 CHERL 

and grew up, to my horror, out of all possibility 
of caresses, into a great, ugly, fierce, fighting ani- 
mal, that comes into the house drenched and drip- 
ping from the mud-puddle in which she has been 
rolling in a deadly struggle with every Tom Hyer 
and Bill Sayers of the cat kind that make night 
hideous through the village. This cat seems to 
be possessed with a devil every time she looks 
at Cheri. Her green eyes bulge out of her head, 
her whole feline soul rushes into them, and glares 
with a hot, greeny-yellow fire and fury of un- 
quenchable desire. One evening I had put the 
cage on a chair, and was quietly reading in the 
room below, when a great slam and bang startled 
the house. " The bird ! " shrieked a voice, mine 
or another's. I rushed up-stairs. The moon- 
light shone in, revealing the cage upturned on 
the floor, the water running, the seeds scattered 
about, and a feather here and there. The cat 
had managed to elude observation and glide in, 
and she now manao;ed to elude observation and 
glide out. Cheri was alive, but his enemy had 
attacked him in the flank, and turned his left wing, 
which was pretty much gone, according to all ap- 
pearances. He could not mount his perch, and 
for three days, crouching on the floor of his cage, 
life seemed to have lost its charm. His spir- 
its drooped, his appetite failed, and his song was 
hushed. Then his feathers grew out again, his 
spirit returned to him with his appetite, and he 



CHERI. 337 

hopped about as good as new. To think that 
cat should have been able to thrust her villanous 
claw in far enough to clutch a handful of feathers 
out of him before she upset the cage ! I have 
heard that canaries sometimes die of fright. If 
so, I think Cheri would have been justified in 
doing it. To have a great overgrown monster, 
with burning globes of eyes as big as your head 
and claws as sharp as daggers, come glaring on 
you in the darkness, overturn your house, and 
grab half your side with one huge paw, is a thing 
well calculated to alarm a person of delicate or- 
ganization. 

Then I said to myself, this cat thinks she has 
struck a placer, and a hundred to one she will be 
driving her pick in here again directly. So I 
i removed the cage immediately, and set it on a 
I high bureau, with a " whisking-stick " close by it. 
I Sure enough I was awakened the next morn- 
ing before day by a prolonged and mournful 
I " maeouw " of disappointment fi'om the old dragon 
j at not finding the prey where she had expected. 
I Before she had time to push her researches to suc- 
; cess, she and I and the stick were not letting the 
' grass grow under our feet on the stairs. Long 
after, when the fright and flurry had been forgot- 
ten, the cage was again left in a rocking-chair in 
' the upper front entry, where I had been sitting in 
' the sunshine all the afternoon with Cheri, who 
I thinks me, though far inferior to a robin or a finch, 

15 V 



338 CILERI. 

still better than no company at all. In the course 
of the evening I happened to open the lower entry 
door, when the cat suddenly appeared on the 
lower stair. I should have supposed she had 
come from the sitting-room with me, but for a 
certain elaborate and enforced nonchalance in her 
demeanor, a jaunty air of insouciance^ as far re- 
moved, on the one hand, from the calm equilibrium 
of dignity which almost imperceptibly soothes and 
reassures you, as from the guileless gayety of in- 
fantile ignorance, which perforce " medicines your 
weariness," on the other, — a demeanor which at 
once disgusts and alarms you. I felt confident that 
some underhand work was going on. I went up- 
stairs. There was Cheri again, this time with his 
right wing gone, and a modicum of his tail. The 
cage had retained its position, but the Evil One 
had made her grip at him ; and the same routine of 
weariness, silence, loss of appetite and spirits was 
to be gone through with again, followed by re-plum- 
ing and recuperating. But every time I think of 
it, I am lost in wonder at the skill and sagacity of 
that cat. It was something to carry on the cam- 
paign in a rocking-chair, without disturbing the 
base of operations so as to make a noise and create 
a diversion in favor of the bird ; but the cunning 
and self-control which, as soon as I opened the 
door, made her leave the bird, and come purring 
about my feet, and tossing her innocent head to 
disarm suspicion, ^vas wonderful. I look at her 



I 



CHERL 339 



sometimes, when we have been sitting together a 
long while, and say, with steadfast gaze, " Cat- 
soul, what are you ? Where are you ? Whence 
come you ? Whither go you ? " But she only 
flirts her whiskers, and gives me no satisfaction. 
But I saw at once that I must make a different 
disposition of Cheri. It would never do to have 
him thus mauled. To be sure, I suppose the cat 
might be educationally mauled into letting him 
alone ; but why should I beat the beast for simply 
acting after her kind ? Has not the Manciple, 
with as much philosophy as poetry, bidden, — 

" Let take a cat, and foster hire with milke 
And tendre flesh, and make hire couche of silke, 
And let hire see a mous go by the wall. 
Anon she weiveth milke and flesh, and all, 
And every deintee that is in that hous, 
Swich appetit hath she to ete the mous 
Lo, here hath kind hire domination, 
And appetit fleraeth discretion " ? 

Accordingly I respected the " domination " of 
" kind," took the cage into the parlor and hung it 
up in the folds of the window-curtain, where there 
is always sunshine, wrapping a strip of brown paper 
around the lower part of the cage, so that he should 
not scatter his seeds over the carpet. What is the 
result ? Perversely he forsakes his cup of seed, 
nicely mixed to suit his royal taste ; forsakes his 
conch-shell, nicely fastened within easy reach ; 
forsakes the bright sand that lies whitely strewn 
beneath his feet, and pecks, pecks, pecks away at 



340 CHERL 

that stiff, raw, coarse brown paper, jagging great 
gaps in it from hour to hour. I do not mind the 
waste of paper, even at its present high prices ; but 
suppose there should be an ornithological dyspep- 
sia, or a congestion of the gizzard, or some internal 
derangement ? The possibility of such a thing 
gave me infinite uneasiness at first ; but he has 
now been at it so long without suffering percepti- 
; ble harm, that I begin to think Nature knows what 
she is about, and brown paper agrees with birds. 
I am confident, however, that he would devour it 
all the same, whether it were salutary or otherwise, 
for he is a mule-headed fellow. I let him loose on 
the flower-stand yesterday, hoping he might deal 
death to a horde of insects who had suddenly 
squatted on the soil of the money-plant. He 
scarcely so much as looked at the insects, but 
hopped up to the adjoining rose-bush, and pro- 
ceeded to gorge himself with tender young leaves. 
I tilted him away from that, and he fluttered across 
the money-plant over to the geranium opposite. 
Disturbed there, he flashed to the other side of the 
stand, and, quick as thought, gave one mighty dab 
at a delicate little fuchsia that is just " picking up " 
from the effects of transplanting and a long winter 
journey. Seeing he was bent on making himself 
disagreeable, I put him into his cage . again, first 
havincr to chase him all about the room to catch 
him, and prying him up at last from between a pic- 
ture and the wall, where he had flown and settled 



CHERI. 341 

down m his struggle to get out. For my Cheri is 
not in the least tame. He is an entirely unedu- 
cated bird. I have seen canaries sit on people's 
fingers and eat from tlieir tongues, but Cheri flies 
around like a madman at the first approach of fin- 
gers. Indeed, he quite provokes me by his want of 
trust. He ought to know by this time that I am 
his friend, yet he goes off into violent hysterics the 
moment I touch him. He does not even show 
fight. There is no outcry of anger or alarm, but 
one " Yang ! " of utter despair. He gives up at 
once. Life is a burden, his " Yang ! " says. " Ev- 
erything is going to ruin. There is no use in 
trying. I wish I never was born. Yang ! " Lit- 
tle old croaker, what are you Yang-ing for ? 
Nobody wishes to harm you. It is your little 
cowardly heart that sees lions and hyenas in a well- 
meaning forefino;er and thumb. Be sensible. 

Another opportunity for the exhibition of his 
perversity is furnished by his bathing. His per- 
sonal habits are exquisite. He has a gentleman's 
liking for cold water and the appliances of cleanli- 
ness ; but if I spread a newspaper on the floor, 
and prepare everything for a comfortable and con- 
venient bath, the little imp clings to his perch 
immovable. It is not only a bath that he wishes, 
but fun. Mischief is his sine qua non of enjoy- 
ment. '^ What is the good of bathing, if you 
cannot spoil anything ? " says he. " If you will 
put the bath-tub in the window, where I can splash 



342 CHERI. 

and spatter the glass and the curtains and the fur- 
niture, very well, but if not, why — " he sits in- 
corrigible, with eyes half closed, pretending to be 
sleepy, and not see water anywhere, the rogue ! 

One day I heard a great " to-do " in the cage, 
and found that half the blind was shut, and helped 
Cheri to a reflection of himself, which he evidently 
thought was another bird, and he was in high 
feather. He hopped about from perch to perch, 
sidled from one side of the cage to the other, 
bowed and bobbed and courtesied to himself, sung 
and swelled and smirked, and became thoroughly 
frantic with delight. " Poor thing ! " I said, " you 
are lonely, no wonder." I had given him a new 
and shining cage, a green curtain, a sunny window ; 
but of what avail are these to a desolate heart ? 
Who does not know that the soul may starve in 
splendor ? " Solitude," says Balzac, I think, " is a 
fine tliino; ; but it is also a fine thins; to have some 
one to whom you can say, from time to time, that 
solitude is a fine thins:.'' . I know that I am but a 
poor substitute for a canary-bird, — a gross and 
sorry companion for one of ethereal mould. I can 
supply seed and water and conch-shells, but what do 
I know of finchy loves and hopes ? What sympa- 
thy have I to offer in his joyous or sorrowful moods? 
How can I respond to his enthusiasms ? How can 
I compare notes with him as to the sunshine and 
the trees and the curtain and views of life? //It is 
not sunshine, but sympathy, that lights up houses 



CHERT. 343 

into homes/ • Companionship is what he needs, 
alike for his higher aspirations and his every-day 
experiences, — somebody to whom he can observe 
that " The sand is rather gritty to-day, is n't it ? '* 

" Very much as usual, my dear." 

" Here is a remarkably plump seed, my dear , 
won't you have it?" 

" No, thank you, dear, nothing more. Trol-la- 
la-r-r-r!" 

" Do let me help you to a bit of this hemp. It 
is quite a marvel of ripeness." 

'' Thank you. Just a snip. Plenty." 

'' My dear, I think you are stopping in the 
bath-tub too long this morning. I fancied you 
were a trifle hoarse yesterday." 

" It was the company, pet. I strained my voice 
slightly in that last duet." 

" We shall have to be furnished with a new 
shell before long. This old one is getting to be 
rather the last peas of the picking." 

" Yes, I nearly broke my beak over it yester- 
day. I was quite ashamed of it when the ladies 
were staring at you so admiringly." 

"■ Little one, I have a great mind to try that 
swing. It has tempted me this long while." 

'' My love, I beg you will do no such thing. 
You will inevitably break your neck." 

Instead of this pleasant conjugal chit-chat, what 
has he ? Nothincr. He stands lookins: out at the 
window till his eyes ache, and then he turns 



344 CHERT. 

around and looks at Tae. If any one comes in 
and begins to talk, and he delightedly joins, he 
gets a handkerchief thrown over his cage. Some- 
times the cat creeps in, — very seldom, for I do 
not trust her, even with the height of the room 
between them, and punish her whenever I find 
her on forbidden ground, by taking her up-stairs 
and putting her out on the porch-roof, where 
she has her choice to stay and starve or jump 
off. This satisfies my conscience while giving 
a good lesson to the cat, who is not fond of sal- 
tatory feats, now that she is getting into years. 
If it is after her kind to prey upon birds, and she 
must therefore not be beaten, it is also after her 
kind to leap from anywhere and come down on 
her feet, and therefore the thing does not harm 
her. Whenever she does stealthily worm herself 
in, Cheri gives the pitch the moment he sets eyes 
on her. Cat looks up steadily at him for five 
minutes. Cheri, confident, strikes out in a very 
tempting way. Cat describes a semicircle around 
the window, back and forth, back and forth, 
keeping ever her back to the room and her front 
to the foe, glaring and mewing and licking her 
chaps. O, what a delicious tit-bit, if one could 
but get at it ! Cheri sings relentlessly. Like 
Shirley with Louis Moore in her clutches, he will 
not subdue one of his charms in compassion. 

*' Certes it is not of herte, all that he sings." 
She leaps into a chair. Not a quarter high enough. 



CHERL 345 

She jumps to the window-seat, and walks to and 
fro, managing the turning-points with much diffi- 
culty. Impossible. She goes over to the other 
window. Still worse. She takes up position on 
the sofa, and her whole soul exhales into one want. 

She mews and licks her chaps alternately. 
Cheri " pitilessly sweet " sings with unsparing 
insolence at the top of his voice, and looks in- 
differently over her head. 

That is the extent of his society. "It is too 
bad," I said one day, and scoured the country for 
a canary-bird. Everybody had had one, but it 
was sold. Then I remembered Barnum's Happy 
Family, and went out to the hen-pen, and brought 
in a little auburn chicken, with white breast, and 
wings just budding ; a size and a half larger than 
Cheri, it is true, but the smallest of the lot, and 
very soft and small for a chicken, the prettiest 
wee, waddling tot you ever saw, a Minnie Warren 
of a little duck, and put him in the cage. A tem- 
pest in a tea-pot ! Cheri went immediately into 
fits and furies. He hopped about convulsively. 
You might have supposed him attacked simultane- 
ously with St. Anthony's fire, St. Vitus's dance, 
and delirium tremens. He shrieked, he writhed, 
he yelled, he raved. The chicken was stupid. If 
he had exerted himself a little to be ao;reeable, if 
he had only shown the smallest symptom of inter- 
est or curiosity or desire to cultivate an acquaint- 
ance, I have no doubt something might have been 

15* 



346 CHERI. 

accomplished ; but he just huddled down in one 
corner of the cage, half frightened to death, like 
a logy, lumpy, country bumpkin as he was, and I 
swept him back to his native coop in disgust. 
Relieved from the lout's presence, Cheri gradually 
laid aside his tantrums, smoothed down his ruffled 
plumes, and resumed the manners of a gentleman. 

My attempt at happy families was nipped in the 
bud, decidedly. 

By and by I went to the market-town, and, 
having sold my butter and eggs, hunted up a 
bird-fancier. He had plenty of heliotropes, ver- 
benas, and japonicas, and had had plenty of birds, 
but of course they were every one gone. Nobody 
wanted them. He had just about given them 
away, for a quarter of a dollar or so, and since 
then ever so many had been to buy them. Could 
he tell me where I might find one ? Yes, he sold 
one to the barber last week, down near the depot. 
Didn't believe but what he would sell it. Was 
it a female bird ? For my ambition had grown 
by what it fed on, and, instead of contenting 
myself simply with a companion for Cheri, I 
was now planning for a whole brood of canaries, 
with all the interests of housekeeping, baby-tend- 
ing, and the manifold small cares incident upon 
domestic life. In short, I w^as launching out upon 
an entirely new career, setting a new world a- 
spinning in that small wire cage. Yes, it was a fe- 
male bird. A croud bird ? For I could not under- 



CHERI. 347 

stand the marvellously low price. Yes 'm, prime. 
Had eight young ones last year. Eight young 
ones ! I rather caught my breath. I wanted 
a brood, but I thought three was the regular 
number, and I must confess I could hardly look 
with fortitude on such a sudden and enormous 
accession of responsibility. Besides, the cage 
was not half large enough. And how could they 
all bathe ? And how could I take proper care of 
so many? And, dear me, eight young ones! 
And eight more next year is sixteen. And the 
grandchildren ! And the great-grandchildren ! 
Hills on hills and Alps on Alps ! I shall be pecked 
out of house and home. I walked up the street 
musingly, and finally concluded not to call on the 
barber just yet. 

It was very well I did so, for just afterwards 
Cheri's matins and vespers waxed fainter and 
fainter, and finally ceased altogether. In great 
anxiety I called in the highest medical science, 
which announced that he was only shedding his 
feathers. This opinion was corroborated by nu- 
merous little angelic soft fine feathers scattered 
about in localities that precluded the cat. Cheri 
is a proud youngster, and I suppose he thought if 
he must lose his good looks, there was no use in 
keeping up his voice ; therefore he moped and 
pouted for several months, and would have ap- 
peared to very great disadvantage in case I had 
introduced a stranger to his good graces. 



348 CHERI. 

So Cheri is still alone in the world, but when 
my ship comes home from sea and brings an addi- 
tional hour to my day, and a few golden eagles to 
my purse, he is going to have his mate, eight 
young ones and all, and I shall buy him a new 
cage, a trifle smaller than Noah's ark, and a cask 
of canary-seed and a South Sea turtle-shell, and 
just put them in the cage and let them colonize. 
If they increase and multiply beyond all possibility 
of provision, why, I shall by that time, perhaps, 
have become world-encrusted and hard-hearted, 
and shall turn the cat in upon them for an hour 
or two, which will no doubt have the effect of at 
once thinning them down to wieldy proportions. 

Sweet little Cheri. My heart smites me to see 
you chirping there so innocent and affectionate 
while I sit here plotting treason against you. 
Bright as is the day and dazzling as the sunlit 
snow, you turn away from it all, so strong is your 
craving for sympathy, and bend your tiny head 
towards me to pour out the fulness of your song. 

And what a song it is ! All the bloom of his 
beautiful islands sheds its fragrance there. The 
hum of his honey-bees roving through beds of 
spices, the loveliness of dark-eyed maidens tread- 
ing the wine-press with ruddy feet, the laughter 
of young boys swinging in the vines and stained 
with the scented grapes, — all the music that rings 
through bis orange-groves, all the sunshine of the 
tropics caught in the glow of fruit and flower, in 



CHERT. 349 

the blue of sky and sea, in the Winding whiteness of 
the shore and the amethystine evening, — all come 
quivering over the western wave in the falls of his 
tuneful voice. You shall hear it while the day is 
yet dark in the folds of the morning twilight, — a 
weak, faint, preliminary " whoo ! whoo ! " uncer- 
tain and tentative, then a trill or two of awakened 
assurance, and then, with a confident, courageous 
gush and glory of soul, he flings aside all minor 
considerations, and dashes con amove into the very 
middle of things. I am not musical, and cannot 
give you his notes in technical hieroglyphs, but in 
exact and intelligible lines such as all may under- 
stand, whether musical or not, his song is like 
this, — and you may rely upon its accuracy, for I 
wrote it down from his own lips this morning : — 




h 



Side-Glances 



AT 



Harvard Class-Day. 



Side-Glances at 
Harvard Class-Day. 




T happened to me once to " assist " at 
the celebration of Class-Day at Har- 
vard University. Class-Day is the pe- 
culiar institution of the Senior Class, 
and marks its completion of College study and 
release from College rules. 

Harvard has set up her Lares and Penates in 
a fine old grove, or a fine old grove and green 
have sprouted up around her, as the case may 
be, — most probably the latter, if one may judge 
from the appearance of the buildings which con- 
stitute the homes of the students, and which seem 
to have been built, and to be now sustained, with- 
out the remotest reference to taste or influence, 
but solely to furnish shelter, — angular, formal, 
stiff, windowy, bricky, and worse witliin than 
without. Why, I pray to know, as the first in- 
quiry suggested by Class-Day, why is it that a 
boys' school should be placed beyond the pale of 



354 SIDE-GLANCES 

civilization ? Do boys take so naturally to the 
amenities of life, that they can safely dispense 
with the conditions of amenity ? Have boys so 
strong a predisposition to grace, that society can 
afford to take them away from home and its in- 
fluences, and turn them loose with dozens of other 
boys into a bare and battered boarding-house, 
with its wood-work dingy, unpainted, gashed, 
scratched ; windows dingy and dim ; walls dingy 
and gray and smoked ; everything narrow and 
rickety, unhomelike and unattractive ? 

America boasts of having the finest educational 
system in the world. Harvard is, if not the most 
distinguished, certainly among the first institutions 
in the country ; but it is necessary only to stand 
upon the threshold of the first Harvard house 
which I entered, to pass through its mean entry 
and climb up its uncouth staircase, to be assured 
that our educational system has not yet found 
its key-stone. It has all the necessary materials, 
but it is incomplete. At its base it is falling 
every day more and more into shape and sym- 
metry, but towards the top it is still only a pile of 
pebbles and boulders, and no arch. We have 
Primary Schools, Grammar Schools, High Schools, 
in which, first, boys and girls are educated to- 
gether, as it seems impossible not to believe that 
God meant them to be ; in which, secondly, home 
life and school life come together, and correct each 
other ; in which, thirdly, comfortable and comely 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 355 

arrangements throughout minister to self-respect. 
But the moment you rise as high as a college, na- 
ture is violated. First, boys go off by themselves to 
their own destruction ; secondly, home influences 
are withdrawn ; and, thirdly, — at Harvard, which 
is tlie only college I ever visited, — the thorough 
comeliness which is found in the lower grades 
of schools does not appear. The separation of 
boys and girls in school is a subject which has 
been much talked about, but has not yet^ come 
to its adequate discussion. But the achievements 
of .the past are the surest guaranties of the future. 
When we remember that, sixty years ago, the 
lowest district public schools were open to boys 
only, and that since that time girls have flocked 
into every grade of school below a college, it is 
difficult to believe that college doors will forever 
stand closed to them. I believe that the time 
will come when any system framed for boys alone 
or for girls alone will be looked upon in the same 
light in which we now regard a monastery or a 
nunnery. Precisely the same course will not be 
prescribed to both sexes, but they will be asso- 
ciated in their education to the inestimable advan- 
tage of both. 

This, however, I do not purpose now to discuss 
further. Neither shall I speak of the second de- 
ficiency, — that of home influences, — any further 
than it is connected with the third, namely, a 
culpable neglect of circumstances which minister 



856 SIDE-GLANCES 

directly to character. I design to speak only of 
those evils which lie on the surface, patent to the 
most casual observer, and which may be removed 
without any change in the structure of society. 
And among the first of these I reckon the mean 
and meagre homes provided for the college stu- 
dents. If the State were poor, if the question 
were between mere rude shelter and no col- 
lege education, we should do well to choose the 
former, and our choice would be our glory. It 
would be worth while even to live in such a 
house as Thoreau suo^o-ests, a tool-box with a 
few augur-holes bored in it to admit air, and 
a hook to hook down the lid at niMit. But we 
are not poor. Society has money enough to 
do everything it wishes to do; and it has pro- 
vided no better homes for its young men be- 
cause it has not come to the point of believing 
that better homes are necessary. Sometimes it 
affects to maintain that this way of living is ben- 
eficial, and talks of the disciplinary power of 
soldiers' fare. It is true that a soldier, living on 
a crust of bread and lying on the ground for love 
of country or of duty, is ennobled by it ; but it 
is also true, that a miser doing the same things 
for love of stocks and gold is degraded ; and a 
dreamer doing it serenely unconscious is neither 
ennobled nor degraded, but is simply laying the 
foundation for dyspepsia. To despise the ele- 
gances of life when tliey interfere with its duties 



A2' HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 357 

is the part of a hero. To be mdifFerent to them 
when they stand in the way of knowledge is the at- 
tribute of a philosopher. To disregard them when 
they would contribute to both character and cul- 
ture is neither the one nor the other. It was 
very well to cultivate the muses on a little oat- 
meal, when resources were so scanty that a be- 
quest of seven hundred and seventy-nine pounds 
seventeen shillings and two pence was a gift 
munificent enough to confer upon the donor the 
honor of giving his name to the College so en- 
dowed ; when a tax of one peck of corn, or 
twelve pence a year, from each family was all 
that could reasonably be levied for the mainte- 
nance of poor scholars at the College ; when the 
Pilgrims — hardly escaped from persecution, and 
plunged into the midst of perils by Indian war- 
fare, perils by frost and famine and disease, but 
filled with the love of liberty, and fired with the 
conviction that only fortified by learning could 
it be a blessing — gave of their scanty stock and 
their warm hearts, one man his sheep, another his 
nine shillings' worth of cotton cloth, a third his 
pewter flagon, and so on down to the fruit-dish, the 
sugar-spoon, the silver-tlpt jug, and the trencher- 
salt ; but a generation that is not astonished when 
a man pays six thousand dollars for a few feet 
of land to bury himself in, is without excuse in 
not providing for its sons a dignified and respect- 
able home during the four years of their col- 



358 SIDE-GLANCES 

lege life, — years generally when they are most 
susceptible of impressions, most impatient of re- 
straints, most removed from society, and most 
need to be surrounded by every inducement to a 
courteous and Christian life. What was a larse- 
minded liberality then may be but niggardliness 
or narrowness now. If indeed there be a prin- 
ciple in the case, the principle that this arrange- 
ment is better adapted to a generous growth than 
a more ornate one, then let it be carried out. 
Let all pubhc edifices and private houses be re- 
duced to a scale of Spartan simplicity; let cam- 
el's-hair and leathern girdles take the place of 
broadcloth, and meat be locusts and wild honey. 
But so long as treasures of art and treasures of 
wealth are lavished on churches, and court-houses, 
and Capitols, and private dwellings, so long as 
earth and sea are forced to give up the riches 
which are in them for the adornment of the per- 
son and the enjoyment of the palate, we cannot 
consistently bring forward either principles or 
practice to defend our neglect withal. If the ex- 
periment of a rough and primitive life is to be 
tried, let it be tried at home, where community 
of interests, and diversity of tastes, and the re- 
finements of family and social life, will prevent 
it from degenerating into a fatal failure ; but 
do not let a horde of boys colonize in a base 
and shabby dwelling, unless you are willing to 
admit the corollary that they may to that extent 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 359 

become Lase and shabby. If they do become 
so, they are scarcely blameworthy ; if they do 
not, it is no thanks to the system, but because 
other causes come in to deflect its conclusions. 
But why set down a weight at one end of the 
lever because there is a power at the other ? Why 
not w^ait until, in the natural course of things, 
the lever comes to an obstacle, and then let 
the power bear down with all its might to re- 
move it ? 

Doubtless those who look back upon their col- 
lege days through the luminous mist of years, see 
no gray walls or rough floors, and count it only 
less than sacrilege to find spot or wrinkle or any 
such thing on the garments of their alma mater. 
But awful is the gift of the gods that we can be- 
come used to things ; awful, since, by becoming 
used to them, we become insensible to their faults 
and tolerant of their defects. Harvard is beloved 
of her sons : would she be any less beloved if she 
were also beautiful to outside barbarians ? Would 
her fame be less fair, or her name less dear, if 
those w^ho come up to her solemn feasts, filled 
with the idea of her greatness, could not only 
tell her towers, but Consider her palaces, without 
being forced to bury their admiration and rever- 
ence under the first threshold which they cross ? 
O, be sure the true princess is not yet found, for 
the king's daughter is all glorious within. 

Deficiency takes shelter under antiquity and 



360 SIDE-GLANCES 

associations : associations may, indeed, festoon 
unlovely places, but would tliey cluster any less 
richly around walls that were stately and ade- 
quate ? Is it not fitter that associations should 
adorn, than that they should conceal ? If here 
and there a relic of the olden time is cherished 
because it is olden, — a house, a book, a dress, — 
shall we then live only in the houses, read only the 
books, and wear the dresses of our ancestors ? If 
here and there some ship has breasted the billows 
of time, and sails the seas to-day because of its 
own inherent grace and strength, shall we, there- 
fore, cling to crazy old crafts that can with diffi- 
culty be towed out of harbor, and must be kept 
afloat by constant application of tar and oakum ? 
As I read the Bible and the world, gray hairs are 
a crown unto a man only when they are found in 
the way of righteousness. Laden with guilt and 
heavy woes, behold the aged sinner goes. A , 
seemly old age is fair and beautiful, and to be 
had in honor by all people ; but an old age 
squalid and pinched is of all things most pitiful. 
After the Oration and Poem, which, having 
nothing distinctive, I pass over, comes the *' Col- 
lation." The members of the Senior Class prepare 
a banquet, — sometimes separately and sometimes 
in clubs, at an expense ranging from fifty to five 
hundred dollars, — to which they invite as many 
friends as they choose, or as are available. The 
banquet is quite as rich, varied, and elegant as you 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 361 

find at evening parties, and the occasion is a merry 
and pleasant one. But it occurred to me that there 
may be unpleasant things connected with this cus- 
tom. In a class of seventy-five, in a country like 
America, it is probable that a certain propor- 
tion are ill able to meet the expense which such 
a custom necessitates. Some have fought their 
own way through college. Some must have been 
fought through by their parents. To them I should 
think this elaborate and considerable outlay must 
be a very sensible inconvenience. The mere ex- 
pense of books and board, tuition and clothing, 
cannot be met without strict economy, and much 
parental and family sacrifice. And at the end of 
it all, when every nerve has been strained, and 
must be strained harder still before the man can 
be considered fairly on his feet and able to run his 
own race in life, comes this new call for entirely 
uncollegiate disbursements. Of course it is only a 
custom. There is no college by-law, I suppose, 
which prescribes a valedictory symposium. Prob- 
ably it grew up gradually from small ice-cream 
beginnings to its present formidable pro} ortions ; 
but a custom is as rimd as a chain. I wandered 
whether the moral character of the youn:; men 
was generally strong enough, by the time they 
were in their fourth collegiate year, to enable tiiem 
lo go counter to the custom, if it involved personal 
sacrifice at home, — whether there was generally 
sufficient courtliness, not to say Christianity, in 
16 



362 SIDE-GLANCEb 

the class, — whether there was sufficient courtesy, 
chivalry, high-breeding, — to make the omission of 
this party-giving unnoticeable, or not unpleasant. 
I by no means say, that the inability of a portion 
of the students to entertain their friends sumptu- 
ously should prevent those who are able from doing 
so. As the world is, some will be rich and some 
will be poor. This is a fact which they have to 
face the moment they go out into the world ; and 
the sooner they grapple with it, and find out its 
real bearings and worth, or worthlessness, the bet- 
ter. Boys are usually old enough by the time they 
are graduated to understand and take philosophi- 
cally such a distinction. Nor do I admit that poor 
people have any right to be sore on the subject of 
their poverty. The one sensitiveness which I can- 
not comprehend, with which I have no sympathy, 
for which I have no pity, and of which I have no 
tolerance, is sensitiveness about poverty. It is 
an essentially vulgar feeling. I cannot conceive 
how a man who has any real elevation of char- 
acter, any self-respect, can for a moment experi- 
ence so ignoble a shame. One may be annoyed 
at the inconveniences, and impatient of the re- 
straint j of poverty ; but to be ashamed to be 
called poor or to be thought poor, to resort 
to sliifts, not for the sake of being comfortable 
or elegant, but of seeming to be. above the neces- 
sity of shifts, is an indication of an inferior mind, 
\Ahether it dwell in prince or in peasant. The 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 3G3 

man ivho does it shows that he has not in liis 
own opinion character enough to stand alone. He 
must be supported by adventitious circumstances, 
or he must falL Nobody, therefore, need ever ex- 
pect to receive sympathy from me in recounting 
the social pangs or slights of poverty. You never 
can be slighted, if you do not slight yourself. 
People may attempt to do it, but their shafts have 
no barb. You turn it all into natural history. It 
is a psychological phenomenon, a study, something 
to be analyzed, classified, reasoned from, and bent 
to your own convenience, but not to be taken to 
heart. It amuses you ; it interests you ; it adds to 
your stock of facts ; it makes life curious and val- 
uable : but if you suffer from it, it is because you 
have not basis, stamina ; and probably you deserve 
to be shghted. This, however, is true only when 
people have become somewhat concentrated. Chil- 
dren know nothing of it. They live chiefly from 
without, not from within. Only gradually as they 
approach maturity do they cut loose from the 
scaffolding, and depend upon their own centre of 
gravity. Appearances are very strong in school. 
Money and prodigality have great weight there, 
notwithstanding the democracy of attainments and 
abilities. Have the students self-poise enough to 
refrain from these festive expenses without suffering 
mortification ? Have they virtue enough to refrain 
from them with the certainty of incurring such 
suffering? Have they nobility, and generosity, 



364 SIDE-GLANCES 

and largeness of soul enough, while abstaining 
themselves for conscience' sake, to share in the 
plans, and sympathize without servility in the pleas- 
ures of their rich comrades? to look on with 
friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed 
malice, at the preparations in which they do not 
join ? Or do they yield to selfishness, and gratify 
their own vanity, weakness, self-indulgence, and 
love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their parents ? 
Or is there such a state of public opinion and usage 
in College, that this custom is equally honored in 
the breach and in the observance ? 

When the feasting was over, the most pictu- 
resque part of the day began. The College green 
put off* suddenly its antique gravity, and became 

" Embrouded as it were a mede 

Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede," — 

" floures " which to their gay hues and graceful 
outlines added the rare charm of fluttering in per- 
petual motion. It was a kaleidoscope without 
angles. To me, niched in the embrasure of an old 
upper window, the scene, it seemed, might have 
stepped out of the Oriental splendor of Arabian 
Nights. I never saw so many well-dressed peo- 
ple together in my life before. That seems a 
rather tame fact to buttress Arabian Nights wuthal, 
but it implies much. The distance was a little 
too great for one to note personal and individual 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 365 

beauty ; but since I have heard that Boston is 
famous for its ugly women, perhaps that was 
an advantage, as diminishing hkevvise individual 
ughness. If no one was strikingly handsome, 
no one was strikingly plain. And though you 
could not mark the delicacies of faces, you could 
have the full effect of costume, — rich, majestic, 
floating, gossamery, impalpable. Everything was 
fresh, spotless, and in tune. It scarcely needed 
music to resolve all the incessant waver and shim- 
mer into a dance ; but the music came, and, like 
sand-grains under the magnet, the beautiful atoms 
swept into stately shapes and tremulous measured 
activity, — o 

" A fine, sweet earthquake gently moved 
By the soft wind of whispering silks." 

Then it seemed like a German festival, and came 
back to me the Fatherland, the lovely season of 
the Blossoming, the short, sweet bliss-month among 
the Blumenbiihl Mountains. 

Nothing can be more appropriate, more har- 
monious, than dancing on the green. Youth, and 
gayety, and beauty — and in summer we are all 
young, and gay, and beautiful — mingle well with 
the eternal youth of blue sky, and velvet sward, 
and the light breezes toying in the tree-tops. 
Youth and Nature kiss each other in the bright, 
clear purity of the happy summer-tide. Whatever 
objections lie against dancing elsewhere must veil 
their faces there. 



366 SIDE-GLANCES 

If only men would not dance ! It is the most 
unbecoming exercise which they can adopt. In a 
women you have the sweep and wave of drapery, j 
gentle undulations, summer-cloud floatings, soft, 
sinuous movements, fluency of pliant forms, the 
willowy bend and rebound of lithe and lovely 
suppleness. It is grace generic, — the sublime, 
the evanescent mysticism of motion, without use, 
without aim, except its own overflowing and all- 
sufficing fascination. But when a man dances, it 
reminds me of that amusing French book called 
" Le Diable Boiteux," which has been free-think- 
ingly translated, " The Devil on Two Sticks." 
A woman's dancing is gliding, swaying, serpentine. 
A man's is jerks, hops, convulsions, and acute 
angles. The woman is light, airy, indistinctly 
defined. Airy movements are in keeping. The 
man is sombre in hue, grave in tone, distinctly 
outlined ; and nothing is more incongruous, to my 
thinking, than his dancing. The feminine drapery 
conceals processes and gives results. The mas- 
culine absence of drapery reveals processes, and 
thereby destroys results. I 

Once upon a time, long before the Flood, the 
clergyman of a country-village, possessed with such 
a zeal as Paul bore record of concerning Israel, 
conceived it his duty to " make a note " of sundry 
young members of his flock who had met for a 
drive and a supper, with a dance fringed upon the 
outskirts. The fame thereof being noised abroad, 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 367 

a sturdy old farmer, with a good deal of shrewd 
sense and mother-wit in his brains, and a fine, in- 
direct way of hitting the nail on the head with 
a side-stroke, was questioned in a neighboring 
village as to the facts of the case. " Yes," he 
said, surlily, " the young folks had a party, and 
got up a dance, and the minister was mad, — and 
I don't blame him, — he thinks nobody has any 
business to dance, unless he knows how better 
than they did ! " It was a rather different casus 
belli from that which the worthy clergyman would 
have preferred before a council ; but it " meets my 
views " precisely as to the validity of the objections 
urged against dancing. I would have women 
dance, and women only, because it is the most 
beautiful thing in the world. And I think my 
view^s are Scriptural, for I find that it was the 
virgins of Israel that were to go forth in the 
dances of them that make merry. It was the 
daughters of Sbiloh that went out to dance in 
dances at the feast of the Lord on the south of 
Lebonah. 

From my window overlooking the green, I was 
led away into some one or other of the several 
halls to see the " round dances " ; and it was like 
going from Paradise to Pandemonium. From 
the pure and heahhy lawn, all the purer for the 
pure and peaceful people pleasantly walking up 
and down in the sunshine and shade, or grouped 
in the numerous windows, like bouquets of rare 



368 SIDE-GLANCES 

tropical flowers, — from the green, rainbowed in 
vivid splendor, and alive with soft, tranquil mo- 
tion, fair forms, and the flutter of beautiful and 
brilliant colors, — from the green, sanctified al- 
ready by the pale faces of sick, and wounded, and 
maimed soldiers who had 2:one out from the shad- 
ows of those shelterincp trees to draw the sword 
for country, and returned white wraiths of their 
vigorous youth, the sad vanguard of that great 
army of blessed martyrs who shall keep forever in 
the mind of this generation how costly and pre- 
cious a thing is liberty, who shall lift our worldly 
age out of the slough of its material prosperity into 
the sublimity of suffering and sacrifice, — from 
suggestions, and fancies, and dreamy musing, and 
" phantasms sweet," into the hall, where, for 
flower-scented summer air were thick clouds of 
fine, penetrating dust ; and for lightly trooping 
fairies, a jam of heated human beings, so that 
you shall hardly come nigh the dancers for the 
press ; and when you have, with difficulty, and 
many contortions, and much apologizing, thread- 
ed the solid mass, piercing through the forest 
of fans, — what ? An enclosure, but no more 
illusion. 

Waltzing is a profane and vicious dance. When 
it is prosecuted in the centre of a great crowd, in 
a dusty hall, on a warm midsummer day, it is also 
a disgusting dance. Night is its only appropriate 
time. The blindino;, dazzlino; cvas-liirht throws a 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 369 

grateful glare over the salient points of its inde- 
cency, and blends the whole into a wild whirl that 
dizzies and dazes one ; but the uncompromising 
afternoon, pouring in through manifold windows, 
tears away every illusion, and reveals the whole 
coarseness and commonness and all the repulsive 
details of this most alien and unmaidenly revel. 
The very pose of the dance is profanity. Atti- 
tudes which are the instinctive expression of inti- 
mate emotions, glowing rosy-red in the auroral 
time of tenderness, and justified in unabashed 
freedom only by a long and faithful habitude of 
unselfish devotion, are here openly, deliberately, 
and carelessly assumed by people who have but 
a casual and partial society-acquaintance. This 
I reckon profanity. This is levity the most cul- 
pable. This is a guilty and wanton waste of 
dehcacy. That it is practised by good girls and 
tolerated by good mothers does not prove that it 
is good. Custom blunts the edge of many per- 
ceptions. A good thing soiled may be redeemed 
by good people ; but waltz as many as you may, 
spotless maidens, you will only smut yourselves, 
and not cleanse the waltz. It is of itself un- 
clean. 

There were, besides, peculiar desagrements on 
this occasion. As I said, there was no ilhision, — 
not a particle. It was no Vale of Tempe, with 
Nymphs and Apollos. The boys were boys, 
young, full of healthful promise, but too much 

16* X 



370 SIDE-GLANCES 

in the husk for exhibition, and not entirely at 
ease in their situation, — indeed, very much not 
at ease, — unmistakably warm, nervous, and un- 
comfortable. The girls were pretty enough girls, 
I dare say, under ordinary circumstances, — one 
was really lovely, with soft cheeks, long eyelashes, 
eyes deep and liquid, and Tasso's gold in her hair, 
though of a bad figure, ill set off by a bad dress, — 
but Venus herself could not have been seen to 
advantage in such evil plight as they, panting, 
perspiring, ruffled, frowzy, — puff-balls revolving 
through an atmosphere of dust, — a maze of steam- 
ing, reeking human couples, inhumanly heated and 
simmering together with a more than Spartan for- 
titude. 

It was remarkable, and at the same time amus- 
ing, to observe the difference in the demeanor of 
the two sexes. The lions and the fawns seemed 
to have changed hearts, — perhaps they had. It 
was the boys that were nervous. The girls were 
unquailing. The boys were, however, heroic. 
They tried bravely to hide the fox and his gnaw- 
ings ; but traces were visible. They made des- 
perate feint of being at the height of enjoyment 
and unconscious of spectators ; but they had much 
modesty, for all that. The girls threw themselves 
into It pngnis et caldhus^ — unshrinking, indefati- 
gable. Did I say that it was amusing? I should 
rather say that It was painful. Can it be any- 
thing but painful to see young girls exhibiting the 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 371 

hardihood of the "professional" without the ex- 
tenuating necessity? 

There is another thing which girls and their 
mothers do not seem to consider. The present 
mode of dress renders waltzing almost as objec- 
tionable in a large room as the boldest feats of a 
French ballet-dancer. 

If the title of my article do not sufficiently 
indicate the depth and breadth of knowledge on 
which my opinions assume to be based, let me, 
that I may not seem to claim confidence upon 
false pretences, confess that I have never seen, 
either in this country or abroad, any ballet-dancer 
or any dancer on any stage. I do not suppose 
that I have ever been at any assembly where 
waltzing was a part of the amusements half a 
dozen times in my life, and never in the daytime, 
until upon this occasion. I also admit that the 
sensations with which one would look upon this 
performance at^ Harvard would depend very much 
upon whether one went to it from that end of 
society which begins at the Jardin Mabille, or 
that which begins at a New England farm-house. 
I speak from the stand-point of the New England 
farm-house. Whether that or the Jardin Mabille 
is nearer the stand-point of the Bible, every one 
must decide for himself. When I say '' this is 
right, this is wrong," I do not wish to be under- 
stood as settling the question for others, but as 
expressing my own strongest conviction. When 



372 SIDE-GLANCES 

I say tliat the present mode of dress renders 
waltzing almost as objectionable in a large room 
as the boldest feats of a French ballet-dancer, I 
mean that, from what I have heard and read of 
ballet-dancers, I judge that these girls gyrating in 
the centre of their gyrating and unmanageable 
hoops, cannot avoid, or do not know how to avoid, 
at any rate do not avoid, the exposure which the 
short skirts of the ballet-dancer are intended to 
make, and which, taking to myself all the shame 
of both the prudery and the coarseness if I am 
wrong, I call an indecent exposure. In the glare 
and glamour of gas-light, it is flash and clouds 
and indistinctness. In the broad and honest day- 
light it is not. Indeed, I do not know that I will 
say " almost." Anything which tends to remove 
from woman her sanctity is not only almost, but 
altogether objectionable. Questionable action is 
often consecrated by holy motive, and there, even 
mistake is not fatal ; but in this thing is no noble 
principle to neutralize practical error. 

I do not speak thus about waltzing because I 
like to say it ; but ye have compelled me. If one 
member suffers, all the members suflPer with it. 
I respect and revere woman, and I cannot see 
her destroying or debasing the impalpable fra- 
grance and delicacy of her nature without feeling 
the shame and shudder in my own heart. Great 
is my boldness of speech towards you, because 
great is my glorying of you. Though I speak as 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 373 

a fool, yet as a fool receive me. My opinions 
may be rustic. They are at least honest; and 
may it not be that the first fresh impressions of 
an unprejudiced and uninfluenced observer are as 
likely to be natural and correct views as those 
which are the result of many after-thoughts, long 
use, and an experience of multifold fascinations, 
combined with the original producing cause ? My 
opinions may be wrong, but they will do no 
harm ; the penalty will rest alone on me : while, 
if they are right, they may serve as a nail or two 
to be fastened by the masters of assemblies. 

O girls, I implore you to believe me ! They 
are not your true friends who would persuade you 
that you can permit this thing with impunity. It 
is not they who best know your strength, your 
power, your possibilities. It is not they who pay 
you the truest homage. Believe me, for it is not 
possible that I can have any but the highest mo- 
tive. If the evil of foreio;n customs is to be incor- 
porated into American society, if foul freedom of 
manners is to defile our pure freedom of hfe, if the 
robes of our refinement are to be white only when 
relieved against the dark background revealed by 
the polluted stage of a corrupt metropolis, on you 
vrill fall the burden of the consequences. Believe 
me, for your weal and mine are one. Your glory 
is my glory. Your degradation is mine. ; There 
are honeyed words whose very essence is insult. 
There are bold and bitter words whose roots lie 



374 SIDE-GLANCES 

in tlie deepest reverence. Beware of the leaven 
of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. Beware 
of the honor which is dishonor. ) 

I hear that the ground is taken that the affairs 
of Class-Day are not a legitimate subject of pub- 
lic comment ; that it is a private matter of the 
Senior Class, of which one has no more right 
to speak in print than one has so to speak of a 
house in Beacon Street to which one might be 
invited. Is it indeed so? I have no right to 
go into Mr. Smith's house in Beacon Street, — I 
use the term Smith as simply generic, not mean- 
ing to imply for a moment that so plebeian a 
name ever marred a Beacon Street door-plate, — 
and subsequently print that I was hospitably en- 
treated, or that the chair-covers were faded and 
the conversation brilliant. Neither have I any 
right to go into Master Jones's room, in Hollis 
Hall, and inform the public that he keeps wine 
in his cigar-box, and that he entertained his 
friends awkwardly or gracefully. But suppose 
all the Beacon Street families have a custom of 
devoting one day of every year to festivities, in 
which festivities all Boston, and all the friends, 
and the friends' friends, whom each Beacon Street 
family chooses to invite, are in^ated to partake. 
The Common, and the State-House, and the 
Music-Hail, &c. are set apart for dancing, the 
houses are given up to feasting, — and this occurs 
year after year. Is it a strictly private affair ? 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 375 

I have still no right to denounce or applaud or 
in any way characterize Mr. Smith's special ar- 
rangements ; but have I not a right to discuss 
in the most public manner the general features 
of the custom? May I not say that I consider 
the feasting a possible danger, and the dancing 
a certain evil, and assign my reasons for these 
opinions ? 

I have spoken of the condition of some of the 
College buildings. I find in the College records 
repeated instances of the College authorities ap- 
pealing to the public concerning this veiy thing. 
So early as 1651, the Rev. Henry Dunster, Presi- 
dent of the College, represented to the Com- 
missioners of the United Colonies the decaying 
condition of the College buildings, and the neces- 
sity of their repair and enlargement : and the Com- 
missioners reply, that they will recommend to the 
Colonies to give some yearly help, by pecks, 
half-bushels, and bushels of wheat. Is a subject 
that is brought before Congress improper to be 
brought before the public in a magazine ? 

I have spoken of the banqueting arranged by 
the Senior Class. Is that private ? I find in a 
book regularly printed and published, a book 
written by a former President of the College, 
— a man whom no words of mine can affect, yet 
whom I cannot pass without laying at his feet 
my tribute of gratitude and reverence ; a man 
who lives to receive from his contemporaries the 



376 SIDE-GLANCES 

honors which are generally awarded only by pos- 
terity, — I find in this book accounts of votes 
passed by the Corporation and Overseers, pro- 
hibiting Commencers from " preparing or provid- 
ing either plum-cake, or roasted, boiled, or 
baked meats, or pies of any kind " ; and after- 
wards, if any one should do anything contrary 
to this act, or "go about to evade it by plain 
cake, they shall not be admitted to their degree " ; 
and also, " that commons be of better quality, 
have more variety, clean table-cloths of conven- 
ient length and breadth twice a week, and that 
plates be allowed." Now if the plum-cake and 
pies of the " Commencers " are spread before the 
public, how shall one know that the plum-cake 
and pies of an occasion at least equally public, 
and only a month beforehand, must not be men- 
tioned? If any family in Beacon Street should 
pubhsh its housekeeping rules and items in this 
unhesitating manner, I think a very pardonable 
confusion of ideas mio;ht exist as to what was 
legitimately public, and what must be held pri- 
vate. If it be said .that these items concern a 
period from which the many years that have 
since elapsed remove the seal of silence, I have 
but to turn to the Boston Daily Advertiser, a 
journal whose taste and judgment are unques- 
tionable, and find in its issue of July 18, 1863, 
eight closely printed columns devoted to a minute 
description of what they said, and what they did, 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 37T 

at the College festival arranged by the Associa- 
tion of the Alumni, in which description may 
be read such eminently private incidents as that 
— by some unfortunate mistake, which would have 
been a death-blow to any Beacon Street house- 
keeper — there were one hundred more guests than 
there were plates, and — what it might be hoped 
would be quite unnecessary to state — that the un- 
lucky De trop " bore the disappointment with the 
most admirable good-breeding, and retij'ed from 
the hall without noise or disturbance.'''' (Noble 
army of martyrs ! Let a monument more dura- 
ble than brass rise in the hearts of their country- 
men to commemorate their heroism, and let it 
be graven all over, in characters of living light, 
with the old-time query, " Why did n't Jack eat 
his supper? ") 

I find also in the same issue of the same paper 
the Commencement Dinner, its guests, its quan- 
tity and quality, its talk, its singing of songs, 
and giving of gifts; spread before the public. If, 
now, the festivities of Commencement and of the 
Alumni Association are public, by what token 
shall one know that the festivities of Class-Day, 
which have every appearance of being just as 
public, are in reality a family affair, and strictly 
private ? 

I have spoken of waltzing. The propriety of 
my speaking must stand or fall with the previous 
count. But in the book to which I have before 



378 SIDE-GLANCES 

referred is recorded a vote passed by the Over- 
seers, " To restrain unsuitable and unseasonable 
dancing in the College." If a rule of the College 
is published throughout the land, is not the land 
in some measure appealed to, and may it not 
speak when it thinks it sees a custom in open and 
systematic violation of the rule ? 

But, independent of this special rule, Harvard 
College was founded in the early days of the 
Colony. It was the pet and pride and hope of the 
colonists. They gave to it of their abundance 
and their poverty. To what end ? " Dreading 
to leave an- illiterate ministry to the churches," 
says the author of " New England First-Fruits." 
The first Constitution of the Colleo;e declares one 
of its objects to be "• to make and establish all 
such orders, statutes, and constitutions as they 
shall see necessary for the instituting, guiding, 
and furthering of the said College, and the sev- 
eral members thereof, from time to time, in piety, 
morality, and learning." Later, its objects are 
said to be " the advancement of all good litera- 
ture, arts, and sciences," and " the education of 
the English and Indian youth of this country in 
knowledge and godliness." Of the rules of the 
College, one is, " Let every student be earnestly 
pressed to consider well the main end of his life and 
studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ, which 
is eternal life, and, therefore, to lay Christ in the 
bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowl- 



A 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 379 

edge and learning." Quincy says that to the 
Congregational clergy the " institution is perhaps 
more indebted than to any other class of men 
for early support, if not for existence." That it 
has not avowedly turned aside from its original 
object is indicated by the motto which it still 
bears, Christo et JEcclesioe. Now I wish to know 
if the official sanction of this College, founded 
by statesmen-clergy for the promotion of piety 
and learning, to further the welfare of the State, 
consecrated to Christ and the Church, is to be 
given to a practice which no one will maintain 
positively conduces to either piety or learning, 
but which many believe to be positively detri- 
mental to both, and which an overwhelming ma- 
jority of the clergy who founded the College, 
and of their ecclesiastical descendants at the pres- 
ent day, would, I am confident, condemn, and yet 
it is not to be publicly spoken of, because it is 
a private affair ! Has it any right to privacy ? 
Does the College belong to a Senior Class, or to 
the State ? Have the many donations been given, 
and the appropriations been made, for the pleas- 
ure or even profit of any one class, or for the 
whole Commonwealth ? Has any class any right 
to introduce in any College hall, or anywhere, as 
a College class, with the sanction of the Faculty, 
a custom which is entirely disconnected with 
either learning or piety, a custom of doubtful pro- 
priety, not to say morality, inasmuch as many 



380 . SIDE-GLANCES 

believe it to be wrong, and a custom, therefore, 
whose tendency is to weaken confidence in the 
College, and consequently to restrict its benefi- 
cence ? And is the discussion of this thing a 
violation of the rites of hospitality ? 

These are my counts against " Class-Day," as 
it is now conducted. It contains much that is 
calculated to promote neither learning nor god- 
liness, but to retard both. Neither literary nor 
moral excellence seems to enter as an element 
into its standard. In point of notoriety and popu- 
lar interest it seems to me to reach, if not to over- 
top, Commencement-Day, and therefore it tends to 
subordinate scholarship to other and infinitely less 
important matters. It in a manner necessitates 
an expenditure which many are ill able to bear, 
and under which, I have reason to believe, many 
parents do groan, being burdened. It has not the 
pleasure and warmth of reunion to recommend it, 
for it precedes separation. The expense is not 
incurred by men who are masters of their own 
career, who know where they stand and what 
they can do ; but chiefly by boys who are depend- 
ent upon others, and whose knowledge of ways 
and means is limited, while their knowledge of 
wants is deep and pressing and aggressive. It is 
an extraordinary and unnecessary expense, com- 
ing in the midst of ordinary and necessary ex- 
pense, while the question of reimbursement is still 
entirely in abeyance. It launches young men at 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 381 

the outset of tlieir career into extravagance and 
display, — limited indeed in range, but rampant 
within that range, — and thereby throws the in- 
fluence of highest authority in favor of, rather 
than against, that reckless profusion, display, and 
dissipation which is the weakness and the bane 
of our social hfe. It signalizes in a marked and 
public manner the completion of the most varied 
and thorough coui^se of study in the country, and 
the commencement of a career which should be 
the most noble and beneficial, not by peculiar and 
appropriate ceremonies, but by the commonest 
rites of the lecture-room and ball-room ; and I 
cannot but think that, especially at this period of 
our history, when no treasure is esteemed too 
precious for sacrifice, and the land is red with the 
blood of her best and bravest, — when Harvard 
herself mourns for her children lost, but glories m 
her heroes fallen, — that the most obvious and 
prominent customs of Class-Day would be more 
honored in the breach than in the observance. 

I look upon the violation of hospitality .as one 
of the seven deadly sins, — a sin for which no 
punishment is too great ; but this sin I have not 
consciously, and I do not think I have actually, 
committed. I cannot but suspect, that, if I had 
employed the language of exclusive eulogy, — such 
language as is employed at and concerning the 
Commencement dinners and the Alumni dinners, 
— I mio'ht have described the celebration of Class- 



382 SIDE-GLANCES 

Day with much more minuteness than I have at- 
tempted to do, and should have heard no com- 
plaints of violated hospitality. This I would gladly 
have done, had it been possible. As it was not, I 
have pointed out those features which seemed to 
me objectionable, — certainly with no design so 
ridiculous as that of setting up myself against 
Harvard University, but equally certainly with no 
heart so craven as to shrink from denouncing what 
seemed to me wrong because it would be setting 
myself against Harvard University. Opinions 
must be judged by their own weight, not by the 
weight of the persons who utter them. The fair 
fame of Harvard is the possession of every son 
and daughter of Massachusetts, and the least stain 
that mars her escutcheon is the sorrow of all. But 
Harvard is not the Ark of the Covenant, to be 
touched only by consecrated hands, upon penalty 
of instant death. She is honorable, but not sacred ; 
wise, but not infallible. To Christo et ^cclesice, she 
has a right ; to Woli me tangere, she has none. A 
very sijiall hand may hurl an arrow. If it is 
heaven-directed, it may pierce in between the 
joints of the armor. If not, it may rebound upon 
the archer. I make the A^enture, promising that 
I shall not follow the example of that President 
of Harvard who died of a broken heart, because, 
according to Cotton Mather, he '"''fell under tlie 
displeasure of certain good men who made a figure 
in that neighborhood.'^ 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 383 

As it may never again happen to me to be writ- 
ing about colleges, I desire to say in this paper 
everything I have to say on the subject, and 
therefore take this opportunity to refer to the 
practice of " hazing," although it is but remotely 
connected with Class-Day. If we should find it 
among hinds, a remnant of the barbarisms of the 
Dark Ages, blindly handed down by such slow- 
growing people as go to mill with their meal on 
one side of the saddle and a stone on the other to 
balance, as their fathers did, because it never 
occurred to them to divide the meal into two 
parcels and make . it balance itself, we should 
not be surprised ; but " hazing " occurs among 
boys who have been accustomed to the circulation 
of ideas, boys old enough and intelligent enough 
to understand the difference between brutality 
and frolic, old 'enough to know what honor and 
courage mean, and therefore I cannot conceive 
how they should countenance a practice which 
entirely ignores and defies honor, and which 
has not a sin*gle redeeming feature. It has nei- 
ther wisdom nor wit, no spirit, no genius, no 
impulsiveness, scarcely boyish mirth. A nar- 
row range of stale practical jokes, lighted up 
by no gleam of originality, seems to be trans- 
mitted from year to year with as much fidelity 
as the Hebrew Bible, and not half the latitude 
allowed to clergymen of the English Established 
Church. But besides its platitude, its one over- 



384 SIDE-GLANCES 

powering and fatal characteristic is its intense and 
essential cowardice. Cowardice is its head and 
front and bones and blood. One boy does not sin- 
gle out another boy of liis own weight, and take his 
chances in a fair stand-up fight. But a party of 
Sophomores club together in such numbers as to 
render opposition useless, and pounce upon their 
victim unawares, as Brooks and his minions 
pounced upon Sumner, and as the Southern chiv- 
alry is given to doing. For sweet pity's sake, let 
this mode of warfare be monopolized by the South- 
ern chivalry. 

The lame excuse is offered, that it does the 
Freshmen good, — takes the conceit out of them. 
But if there is any Class in College so divested of 
conceit as to be justified in throwing stones, it is 
surely not the Sophomore Class. Moreover, what- 
ever good it may do the sufferers, it does harm, 
and only harm, to the perpetrators ; and neither 
the Law nor the Gospel requires a man to improve 
other people's characters at the expense of his 
own. Nobody can do a wrong without injuring 
himself ; and no young man can do a mean, cow- 
ardly wrong like this without suffering severest 
injury. It is the very spirit of the slaveholder, a 
dastardly and detestable, a tyrannical and cruel 
spirit. If young men are so blinded by custom 
and habit that a meanness is not to them a mean- 
ness because it has been practised for years, so 
much the worse for the young men, and so much 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 385 

the worse for our country, whose sweat of blood 
attests the bale and blast which this evil spirit has 
wrought. If uprightness, if courage, if humanity 
and rectitude and the mind conscious to itself of 
right are anything more than a name, let the 
young men who mean to make time minister to 
life scorn this debasing and stupid practice. 

Why, as one resource against this, as well as 
for its own intrinsic importance, should there not 
be a military department to every college, as well 
as a mathematical department ? Why might not 
every college be a military normal school, so that 
the exuberance and riot of animal spirits, the 
young, adventurous strength and joy in being, 
might not only be kept from striking out as now 
in illegitimate, unworthy, and hurtful directions, 
but might become the very basis and groundwork 
of useful purposes. Such exercise would be so 
promotive of health and discipline, it would so train 
and limber the physical powers, that the superior 
quality of study would, I doubt not, more than 
atone for whatever deficiency in quantity might 
result. And even suppose a little less attention 
should be given to Euclid and Homer, which is of 
the greater importance now-a-days, an ear that 
can detect a false quantity in a Greek verse, or 
an eye that can sight a Rebel nine hundred yards 
off, and a hand that can pull a trigger and shoot 
him ? Knowledge is power ; but knowledge must 
sharpen its edges and polish its points, if it would 

17 T 



386 SIDE-GLANCES 

be greatliest available in days like these. The 
knowledge that can plant batteries and plan cam- 
paigns, that is fertile in expedients and wise to 
baffle the foe, is just now the strongest power. 
Diagrams and first-aorists are good, and they who 
have fed on such meat have grown great, and 
done the state service in their generation ; but 
these times demand new measures and new men. 
It is conceded that we shall probably be for many 
years a military nation. At least a generation of 
vigilance shall be the price of our liberty. And. 
even of peace we can have no stronger assurance 
than a wise and wieldy readiness for war. But 
the education of our unwarlike days is not ade- 
quate to the emergencies of this martial hour. We 
must be seasoned with something stronger than 
Attic salt, or we shall be cast out and trodden 
under foot of men. True, all education is worthy. 
Everything that exercises the mind fits it for its 
work ; but professional education is indispensable 
to professional men. And the profession, par ex- 
cellence^ of every man of this generation is war. 
Country overrides all personal considerations. 
Lawyer, minister, what not, a man's first duty is 
the salvation of his country. When she calls, he 
must go ; and before she calls, let him, if possible, 
prepare himself to serve her in the best manner. 
As things are now at Harvard, college boys are 
scarcely better than cow-boys for the army. Their 
costly education runs greatly to waste. It gives 



AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 387 

them no direct advantage over the clod who 
stumbles agamst a trisyllable. So far as it makes 
them better men, of course they are better sol- 
diers ; but for all of military education which their 
college gives them, they are fit only for privates, 
whose sole duty is to obey. They know nothing 
of military drill or tactics or strategy. The State 
cannot afford this waste. She cannot afford to 
lose the fruits of mental toil and discipline. She 
needs trained mind even more than trained mus- 
cle. It is harder to find brains than to find hands. 
The average mental endowment may be no higher 
in college than out ; but granting it to be as high, 
the culture which it receives gives it immense 
advantage. The fruits of that culture, readiness, 
resources, comprehensiveness, should all be held in 
the service of the State. Military knowledge and 
practice should be imparted and enforced to utilize 
ability, and make it the instrument, not only of 
personal, but of national welfare. That education 
which gives men the advantage over others in the 
race of life should be so directed as to convey that 
advantage to country, when she stands in need. 
Every college might and should be made a nur- 
sery of athletes in mind and body, clear-eyed, 
stout-hearted, strong-limbed, cool-brained, — a 
nursery of soldiers, quick, self-possessed, brave 
and cautious and wary, ready in invention, skilful 
to command men and evolve from a mob an 
army, — a nursery of gentlemen, reminiscent of 



388 HARVARD CLASS-DAY. 

no lawless revels, midnight orgies, brutal outrages, 
launching out already attainted into an attainting 
world, but with many a memory of adventure, 
wild, it may be, and not over-wise, yet pure as 
a breeze from the hills, — banded and sworn 

" To serve as model for the mighty world, 
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, 
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, 
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, 
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, 
Not only to keep doAvn the base in man. 
But teach high thought, and amiable words, 
And courtliness, and the desire of fame, 
And love of truth, and all that makes a man." 




Success in Life 



-CSoi^ 



Success in Life. 



THE SUCCESSFUL. 




HERE are successes more melancholy 
than any failure. There are failures 
more noble than success. The man 
who bega^.. life as a ploughboy, who 
went from his father's farm to the great city with 
his wardrobe tied up in his handkerchief, and 
one dollar in his pocket, and who by application, 
economy, and forecast has amassed a fortune, is 
not necessarily a successful man. If his object 
was to amass a fortune, he is so far successful ; but 
it is a mean and miserable object, and his life would 
be a contemptible, if it were not a terrible, failure. 
We do not keep this sufficiently in mind. Amer- 
ican society, and perhaps all society, is too apt to 
do homage to material prosperity ; but material 
prosperity may be obtained by the sacrifice of moral 
grandeur ; and so obtained, it is an apple of Sodom. 
A man may call out liis whole energy, wield all his 
power, and wealth follow as one of the results. 



392 SUCCESS IN LIFE. 

This is well. Wealth may even be an object, if it 
be a subordinate object, — the servant of a higher 
power. Wealth may minister to the best part of 
man, — but only minister, not master. Only as 
a minister it deserves regard. When it usurps the 
throne and becomes monarch, it is of all things 
most pitiful and abject. The man who sets out 
with the determination to be rich as an end, sets 
out with a very ignoble determination ; and he 
who seeks or values wealth for the respect which 
it secures and the position it gives, is not very 
much higher in the scale ; yet such people are 
often held up to the admiration and imitation of 
American youth ; and oftener still have those men 
been held up for imitation who, whether by deter- 
mination or drift, had become rich, and whose sole 
claim to distinction was that they had become rich. 
Again and ao-ain I have seen " success " which 
seemed to me to be the brand of ignominy rather 
than the stamp of worth, — the epitaph of culture, 
if not of character. I look on with a profound and 
regretful pity. You successful, — you ! with half 
your powers lying dormant, — you, with your im- 
agination stifled, your conscience unfaithful, your 
chivalry deadened into shrewdness, your rehgion 
a tiling of tithes and forms ; — you successful, in 
whom romance has died out ; to whom fidelity and 
constancy and aspiration are nothing but a voice ; 
who remember love and heroism and self-sacrifice 
only as the vaporings of youth ; who measure prin- 



SUCCESS IN LIFE. 893 

ciples by your purse, utility by your using ; who 
see nothing glorious this side of honesty ; nothing 
terrible in the surrender of faith ; nothing degrad- 
ing that is not amenable to the law ; nothing in your 
birthright that may not be sold for a mess of pot- 
tage, if only the mess be large enough, and the pottage 
savory ; — you successful ? Is this success ? Then, 
indeed, humanity is a base and bitter failure. 

It is not necessary that a man should be a rob- 
ber or a murderer, in order to degrade himself. 
Without defraudino; his neio-hbor of a cent, without 
laying himself open to a single accusation of illegal- 
ity or violence, a man may destroy himself A moral 
suicide, he kills out all that belongs to his highest 
nature, and leaves but a bare and battered wreck 
where the temple of the Holy Ghost should rise. 

" Measure not the work 
Until the day 's out, and the labor done ; 
Then bring your gauges." 

Is that man successful who trades on his coun- 
try's necessities ? He, not a politician, nor a horse- 
jockey, nor a footpad, but a man who talks of 
honor and integrity, — a man of standing and in- 
fluence, whose virtue is not tempted by hunger, 
whose life has been such that he may be supposed 
intelligently to comprehend the interests which are 
at stake, and the measures which should be taken 
to secure them, — is he successful because he ob- 
tains in a few months, by the perquisites — not 
illegal, but strained to the extreme verge of legal 
17* 



394 SUCCESS IN LIFE. 

— of an office, — not illegal, but accidental, not in 
the line of promotion, — a sum of money wliicli the 
greatest merit and the highest office in the land 
cannot claim for years ? He is shrewd. He under- 
stands his business. He knows the ins and outs. 
He can manage the sharpers. He can turn an 
honest penny, and a good many of them. He 
need not refuse to do himself a good turn with his 
left hand, while he is doing his country a good turn 
with his right. It is all fair and aboveboard. He 
does the business assigned him, and does it well. 
He takes no more compensation than the law 
allows. The money may as well go to him as to 
shoddy contractors, Shylock sutlers, and the legion 
of plebeian rascals. But it was a good stroke. It 
"svas a great chance. It w^as a rare success. 

O wretched failure ! O pitiful abortion ! O 
accursed hunger for gold ! When the nation 
struggles in a death-agony, when her life-blood is 
poured out from hundreds of noble hearts, when 
men and women and children are sending up to the 
Lord the incense of daily sacrifice in her behalf, 
and we know not yet whether prayer and effort, 
whether faith and works, shall avail, — whether 
our lost birthright, sought carefully, and with 
tears, shall be restored to us once more, — in this 
solemn and awful hour, a man can close his eyes 
and ears to tlie fearful sights and o;reat sig-ns in the, 
heavens, and, stooping earthward, delve with his 
muck-rake in the gutter for the paltry pennies I 



SUCCESS IN LIFE. 395 

A man ? A man ! Is this manhood ? Is this 
manliness ? Is this the race that our institutions 
engender? Is this the best production which we 
have a right to expect ? Is this the result which 
Christianity and civilization combine to offer ? Is 
this the advantage which the nineteenth century 
claims over its predecessors ? Is this the flower of 
all the ages, — earth's last, best gift to heaven ? 

No, — no, — no, — this is a changeling, and no 
child. The true brother's blood cries to us from 
Baltimore. It rings out from the East w^here 
Winthrop fell. It swells up from the West with 
Lyon's dirge. And all along, from hill and valley 
and river-depths, where the soil is drenched, and 
the waters are reddened, and nameless graves are 
scattered, — cleaving clearly through the rattle of 
musketry, mingling grandly with the " diapason 
of the cannonade," or floating softly up under the 
silent stars, — "the thrilling, solemn, proud, pa- 
thetic voice " ceases not to cry unto us day and 
night; its echoes linger tenderly and tearfully 
around every hearth-stone, and vibrate with a 
royal resonance from mountain to sea-shore. The 
mother bends to it in her silent watches. The 
soldier, tempest-tost, hears it through the creak- 
ing cordage, and every true heart knows its brother, 
and takes up the magnificent strain, — victorious, 
triumphant, exultant, — 

" Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." 
Sweet and honorable is it for country to die. 



396 SUCCESS IN LIFE. 



THE UNSUCCESSFUL. 

The unsuccessfiil men are all around us ; and 
among them are those who confound all distinctions 
set up by society, and illustrate the great law of 
compensation set up by God, cutting society at 
right angles, and obtuse angles, and acute angles, 
unnoticed, or but flippantly mentioned by the 
careless, but giving food for intimate reflections to 
those for whom things suggest thoughts. 

Have you not seen them, — these unsuccessful 
men ? — men who seem not to have found their 
niche, but are always on somebody's hands for 
settlement, or, if settled, never at rest ? If they 
are poor, their neighbors say. Why does he not 
learn a trade ? or. Why does he not stick to his 
trade ? He might be well off", if he were not 
so flighty. He has a good head-piece, but he 
potters rhymes ; he tricks out toy-engines and 
knick-knacks ; he roams about the woods gather- 
ing snakes and toads ; and meanwhile he is out at 
the elbows. If he is rich, they say. Why does he 
not make a career ? He has great resources. His 
brain is inexhaustible. He is equipped for any 
emergency. There is nothing which he might not 
attain, if he would only apply himself, but he frit- 
ters himself away. He sticks to nothing. He 
touches on this, that, and the other, and falls off. 

True, O Philosophers, he does stick to nothing, 



SUCCESS IN LIFE. 397 

but condemn him not too harshly. It is the old 
difficulty of the square man in the round hole, and 
the round man in the square hole. They never 
did rest easy there since time began, and never 
will. Many — perhaps the greater number — of 
people have no overmastering inclination for any 
employment. ' They are farmers because their fa- 
thers were before them, and that road was graded 
for them, — or shoemakers, or lawyers, or minis- 
ters, for the same reason. If circumstances had 
impelled them in a different direction, they would 
have gone in a different direction, and been content. 
It is not easy for them to conceive that a man is an 
indifferent lawyer, because his raw material should 
have been worked up into a practical engineer ; or 
an unthrifty shoemaker, because he is a statesman 
nipped in the bud. Yet such things are. Some- 
times these men are gay, giddy, rollicking fellows. 
Sometimes their faces are known at the gaming- 
houses and the gin-palaces. Sometimes they go 
down quickly to a dishonored grave, over which 
Love stands bewildered, and weeps her unavailing 
tears. Sometimes, on the other hand, they are 
gloomy, sad, silent. Perhaps they are morose. 
Worse still, they are whining, fretful, complaining. 
You would even call them sour. Often they are 
cynical and disagreeable. But be not too hasty, 
too sweeping, too clear-cut. I have seen such men 
who were the reverse of the Pharisees. Their 
faces were a tombstone. The portals of their 



398 SUCCESS IN LIFE. 

soul were guarded by lions scarcely chained. But 
though their temple had no Beautiful Gate, it was 
none the less a temple, consecrated to the Most 
High. Within it, day and night, the sacred fire 
burned, the sacred Presence rested. There, hon- 
or, justice, devotion, and all heroic virtues dwelt. 
Thence falsehood, impurity, profanity, — what- 
soever loveth and maketh a lie, — were excluded. 
They are unsuccessful, because they will not lower 
the standard which their youth unfurled. Its folds 
float high above them, out of reach, but not out of 
sight, nor out of desire. With constant feet they 
are climbing up to grasp it. You do not see it ; 
no, and you never will. You need not strain your 
aching eyes ; but they see it, and comfort their 
weary hearts withal. 

These men may receive sympathy, but they do 
not need pity. They are a thousand times more 
blessed than the vulgarly successful. The shell is 
wrinkled, and gray, and ugly ; but within, the meat 
is sweet and succulent. Perhaps they will never 
make a figure in the world, but 

" True happiness abides with him alone 
Who in the silent hour of inwai'd thought 
Can still suspect and still revei-e himself 
In lowliness of mind." 

And it is even better never to be happy than to 
be sordidly happy. It is better to be nobly dissatis- 
fied than meanly content. A splendid sadness is 
better than a vile enjoyment. 



SUCCESS IN LIFE. 399 

I hear of people that never failed in anything 
they undertook. I do not believe in them. In 
the first place, however, I do not believe this testi- 
mony is true. It is the honest false- witness, it is 
the benevolent slander of their affectionate and 
admiring friends. But if it were in any case true, 
I should not believe in the man of whom it was 
affirmed. It is difficult to conceive that a person of 
elevated character should not attempt many things 
too high for him. He finds himself set down in 
the midst of life. Earth, air, and water, his own 
mind and heart, the whole mental, moral, and phys- 
ical world, teem with mysteries. He is surrounded 
with problems incapable of mortal solution. He 
must grasp many of them and be foiled. He must 
attack many foes and be repulsed. He may be 
stupidly blind, or selfish, or cowardly, and make 
no endeavor, — in which case he will of course en- 
dure no defeat. If he sets out with small aims, he 
may accomplish them ; but it is not a thing to 
boast of. ' It is better to fall below a high standard 
than to come up to a low one, — to try great things 
and fail, than to try only small ones and succeed. 
For he who attempts grandly will achieve much, 
while he whose very desires are small will make 
but small acquisitions. Of course, I am not speak- 
ing now of definite, mensurable matters of fact, in 
which the r^e verse is the case. Of course, it is bet- 
ter to build a small house and pay for it, than to 
build a palace and involve yourself in debt. , It is 



400 SUCCESS IN LIFE. 

wiser to set yourself a reasonable task and perform 
it, than a prodigious one and do nothing. 1 am 
endeavoring to present only one side of a truth 
which is many-sided, — and that side is, that great 
deeds are done by those who aspire greatly. You 
may not attain perfection, but if you strive to be 
perfect, you will be better than if you were content 
to be as good as your neighbors. You are not, 
perhaps, the world's coming man; but if you aim 
at the completest possible self-development, you 
will be a far greater man than if your only aim is 
to keep out of the poor-house. " I have taken all 
knowledge to be my province," said Lord Bacon. 
He did not conquer ; he could not even overrun 
his whole province ; but he made vast inroads, — 
vaster by far than if he had designed only to oc- 
cupy a garden-plot in the Delectable Land. True 
greatness is a growth, and not an accident. The 
bud, brought into light and warmth, may burst 
suddenly into flower ; but the seed must have been 
planted, and the kindly soil must have wrapped 
it about, and shade and shine and shower must 
have wrought down into the darkness, and nursed 
and nurtured the tiny germ. The touch of circum- 
stance may reveal, may even quicken, but cannot 
create, nobihty. 

This I reckon to be success in life, — fitness, 
— perfect adaptation. I hold him successful, and 
him only, who has found or conquered a position 
in which he can bring himself into full play. Sue- 



SUCCESS IN LIFE. 401 

cess Is perfect or partial, according as it comes up 
to, or falls below, this standard. But entire suc- 
cess is rare in this world. Success in business, 
success in ambition, is not success in life, though 
it may be comprehended in it. Very few are the 
symmetrical lives. Very few of us are working 
at the top of our bent. One may give scope to his 
mechanical invention, but his poetry is cramped. 
One has his intellect at high pressure, but the fires 
are out under his heart. One is the bond-servant 
of love, and Pegasus becomes a dray-horse, Apollo 
must keep the pot boiling, and Minerva is hurried 
with the fall sewing. So we go, and above us the 
sun shines, and the stars throb ; and beneath us 
the snows, and the flowers, and the blind, instinc- 
tive earth ; and over all, and in all, God blessed 
forever. 

Now, then, success being the best thing, we do 
well to strive for it ; but success being difficult to 
attain, if not unattainable, it remains for us to 
wring from our failures all the sap and sustenance 
and succor that are in them, if so be we may 
grow thereby to a finer and fuller richness, and 
hear one day the rapturous voice bid us come up 
higher. 

And be it remembered, what a man is, not 
what a man does, is the measure of success. The 
deed is but the outflow of the soul. By their 
fruits ye shall know them. The outward act has 
its inward significance, though we may not always 



402 SUCCESS IN LIFE. | 

interpret it aright, and its moral aspect depends 
upon the agent. '' In vain," says Sir Thomas 
Browne, " we admire the histre of anything seen ; 
that which is truly glorious is invisible." Charac- 
ter, not condition, is the trust of life. A man's 
own self is God's most valuable deposit with him. 
This is not egotism, but the broadest benevolence. 
A man can do no good to the world beyond him- 
self. A stream can rise no higher than its fountain. 
A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit. If 
a man's soul is stunted and gnarled and dwarfed, 
his actions will be. If his soul is corrupt and 
base and petty, so will his actions be. Faith is 
the basis of works. Essence underlies influence. 
If a man beget an hundred children, and live 
many years, and his soul be not filled with good, 
I say that an untimely birth is better than he. 

When I see, as I sometimes do see, those whom 
the world calls unsuccessful, furnished with every 
virtue and adorned with every grace, made con- 
siderate through suffering, sympathetic by isola- 
tion, spiritedly patient, meek, yet defiant, calm 
and contemptuous, tender even of the sorrows and 
tolerant of the joys which they despise, enduring 
the sympathy and accepting the companionship of 
weakness because it is kindly offered, though it be 
a burden to be dropped just inside the door, and 
not a treasure to be taken into the heart's cham- 
ber, — I am ready to say. Blessed are the unsuc- 
cessful. 



SUCCESS IN LIFE. 403 

Blessed are the unsuccessful, the men who have 
nobly striven and nobly failed. He alone is in an 
evil case who has set his heart on false or selfish 
or trivial ends. Whether he secure them or not, 
he is alike unsuccessful. But he who " loves 
high " is king in his own right, though he '' live 
low." His plans may be abortive, but himself is 
sure. God may overrule his desires, and thwart 
his hopes, and baffle his purposes, but all things 
shall work together for his good. Though he fall, 
he shall rise ao;ain. Every defeat shall be a vie- 
tory. Every calamity shall drop down blessing. 
Inward disappointment shall minister to enduring 
joy. From the grapes of sorrow he shall press 
the wine of life. 

Theodore Winthrop died in the bud of his 
promise. As I write that name, hallowed from 
our olden time, and now baptized anew for the 
generations that are to follow, comes back again 
that warm, bright, midsummer morning, freighted 
with woe, — that dark, sad summer morning that 
wrenched him away from sweet life, and left si- 
lence for song, ashes for beauty, — only cold, im- 
passive clay, where glowing, vigorous vitality had 
throbbed and surged. 

Scarcely had his fame risen to illumine that 
early grave, but, one by one, from his silent desk 
came those brilliant books, speaking to all who had 
ears to hear words of grand resolve and faith, — 
words of higher import than their sound, — key- 



404 SUCCESS IN LIFE. 

words to a lofty life ; for all the bravery and 
purity and trust and truth and tenderness that 
gleam in golden setting throughout his books 
must have been matched with bravery and purity 
and trust and truth and tenderness in the soul 
from which they sprang. Looking at what might 
have been accomplished with endowments so rare, 
culture so careful, and patience so untiring, our 
lament for the dead is not untinsied with bitterness. 
A mind so well poised, so self-confident, so eager 
in its honorable desire for honorable fame, that, 
without the stimulus of publication, it could pro- 
duce work after work, compact and finished, stud- 
ded with gems of wit and wisdom, white and 
radiant with inward purity, — could polish away 
roughness, and toil on alone, pursuing ideal per- 
fection, and attaining a rare excellence, — surely, 
here was promise of great things for the future ; 
but it seemed otherwise to God. A poor little 
drummer-boy, not knowing what he did, sped a 
bullet straightway to as brave a heart as ever beat, 
and quenched a royal life. 

I have spoken of Winthrop, but a thousand 
hearts will supply each its own name wreathed 
with cypress and laurel. Were these lives fail- 
ures? Is not the grandeur of the sacrifice its 
offset ? The choice of life or death is in no 
man's hands. The choice is only and occasion- 
ally in the manner. All must die. To a few, 
and only a few, is granted the opportunity of 



SUCCESS IN LIFE. 405 

dying martyrs. They rush on to meet the Kmg 
of Terrors. They wrest the crown from his awful 
brow, and set it on their own triumphant. They 
die, not from inevitable age or irresistible disease, 
but in the full flush of manhood, in the very prime 
and zenith of life, in that glorious transition-hour 
when hope is culminating in fruition. They die 
of set purpose, with unflinching will, for God and 
the right. O thrice and four times happy these 
who bulwark liberty with their own breasts ! No 
common urn enshrines their sacred dust. No vul- 
gar marble emblazons their hero-deeds. Every- 
place which their life has touched becomes at once 
and forever holy ground. A nation's gratitude em- 
balms their memory. In the generations which 
are to come, when we are lying in undistinguished 
earth, mothers shall lead their little children by 
the hand, and say : " Here he was born. This is 
the blue sky that bent over his baby head. Here 
he fell, fighting for his country. Here his ashes 
lie " ; — and the path thither shall be well worn, 
and for many and many a year there shall be 
hushed voices, and trembling lips, and tear-dimmed 
eyes. Everywhere there shall be death, — yours 
and mine, — but only here and there immortality, 
— and it is his. 

So the young soldier's passing away is not un- 
timely. The longest life can accomplish only bene- 
faction and fame, and the life that has accomplished 
these has reached life's ultimatum. It is a fair and 



406 SUCCESS IN LIFE. 

decorous fate to devote length of days to humanity, 
but he who gathers up his Hfe with all its beauty 
and happiness and hope, and lays it on the altar of 
sacrifice, — he has done all. A century of earthly 
existence only scatters its benefits one by one. 
The martyr binds his in a single bundle of life, 
and the offering is complete. To all noble minds 
fame is sweet and desirable, and threescore years 
and ten are all too few to carve the monument 
more durable than brass ; but when such men as 
Winthrop die such death as his, we seize the tools 
that fall from their dying grasp, and complete the 
fragmentary structure, in shape more graceful, it 
may be, in height more majestic, in colors more 
lovely, than their own hands could have wrought. 
We attribute to them, not simply what they did, 
but all that they might have done. Had Winthrop 
lived, fiiling health, adverse circumstance, might 
have blasted his promise in the bud ; but now 
nothing of that can ever mar his fame. We sur- 
round him with his aspirations. We glorify him 
with his possibilities. He is not only the knight 
without fear and without reproach, but the author 
immortal as the brightest auspices could have made 
his strong and growing powers. A century could 
not have left him greater than the love and hope 
and sorrow of his countrymen, building on the 
little that is known of his short and beautiful life, 
have made him. 

O men and women everywhere who are follow- 



SUCCESS IN LIFE. 407 

ing on to know the Lord, faint yet pursuing ; men 
and women who are troubled, toiUno;, doubtino;, 
hoping, watching, strugghng ; whose attainments 
" through the long green days, worn bare of grass 
and sunshine," lag hopelessly behind your aspira- 
tions ; who are haunted evermore by the ghosts of 
your young purposes ; who see far off the shining 
hills your feet are fain to tread ; who work your 
w^ork with dumb, assiduous energy, but with per- 
petual protest, — I bid you good luck in the name 
of the Lord. 




Happiest D 



AYS 



r 



Happiest Days 




ONG ago, when you were a little boy 
or a little girl, — perhaps not so very 
long ago, either, — were you never in- 
terrupted in your play by being called 
in to have your face washed, your hair combed, 
and your soiled apron exchanged for a clean one, 
preparatory to an introduction to Mrs. Smith, or 
Dr. Jones, or Aunt Judkins, your mother's early 
friend ? And after being ushered into that au- 
gust presence, and made to face a battery of 
questions which were either above or below your 
capacity, and which you consequently despised 
as trasli or resented as insult, did you not, as you 
were gleefully vanishing, hear a soft sigh breathed 
out upon the air, — "Dear child, he is seeing 
his happiest days " ? In the concrete, it was Mrs. 
Smith or Dr. Jones speaking of you. But going 
back to general principles, it was Commonplace- 
dom expressing its opinion of childhood. 

There never was a greater piece of absurdity 



412 HAPPIEST DAYS. 

in the world. I thought so when I was a child, 
and now I know it ; and I desire here to brand 
it as at once a platitude and a falsehood. How 
the idea gained currency, that childhood is the 
happiest period of life, I cannot conceive. How, 
once started, it kept afloat, is equally incompre- 
hensible. I should have supposed that the ex- 
perience of every sane person would have given 
the lie to it. I should have supposed that every 
soul, as it burst into flower, would have hurled 
ofl" the imputation. I can only account for it by 
recurring to Lady Mary Wortley Montague's sta- 
tistics, and concluding that the fools are three out 
of four in every person's acquaintance. 

I for one lift up my voice emphatically against 
the assertion, and do affirm that I think child- 
hood is the most undesirable portion of human 
life, and I am thankful to be well out of it. I 
look upon it as no better than a mitigated form 
of slavery. There is not a child in the land 
that can call his soul, or his body, or his jacket 
his own. A little soft lump of clay he comes 
into the world, and is moulded into a vessel of 
honor or a vessel of dishonor long before he can 
put in a word about the matter. He has no voice 
as to his education or his training, what he shall 
eat, what he shall drink, or wherewithal he shall be 
clothed. He has to wait upon the wisdom, the 
whims, and often the wickedness of other people. 
Imagine, my six-foot friend, how you would feel, 



HAPPIEST DAYS. 413 

to be obliged to wear your woollen mittens when 
you desire to bloom out in straw-colored kids, or 
to be buttoned into your black waistcoat wlien 
your taste leads you to select your white, or to be 
forced under your Kossuth hat when you had set 
your heart on your black beaver : yet this is 
what children are perpetually called on to under- 
go. Their wills are just as strong as ours, and 
their tastes are stronger, yet they have to bend 
the one and sacrifice the other ; and they do it 
under pressure of necessity. Then' reason is not 
convinced; they are forced to yield to superior 
power; and, of all disagreeable things in the 
world, the most disagreeable is not to have your 
own way. When you are grown up, you wear 
a print frock because you cannot afford a silk, or 
because a silk would be out of place, — you wear 
India-rubber overshoes because your polished pat- 
ent-leather would be ruined by the mud ; and 
your self-denial is amply compensated by the re- 
flection of superior fitness or economy. But a 
child has no such reflection to console him. He 
puts on his battered, gray old shoes because you 
make him ; he hangs up his new trousers and 
goes back into his detestable girl's-frock because 
he will be punished if he does not, and it is in- 
tolerable. 

It is of no use to say that this is their disci- 
pline, and is all necessary to their welfare. It 
is a repulsive condition of life in which such 



414 HAPPIEST DAYS. 

degrading surveillance is necessary. You may 
affirm that an absolute despotism is the only gov- 
ernment fit for Dahomey, and I may not disallow 
it; but when you go on and say that Dahomey 
is the happiest country in the world, why — I 
refer you to Dogberry. Now the parents of a 
child are, from the nature of the case, absolute 
despots. They may be wise, and gentle, and 
doting despots, and the chain may be satin-smooth 
and golden-strong ; but if it be of rusty iron, 
parting every now and then and letting the poor 
prisoner violently loose, and agahi suddenly caught 
hold of, bringing him up with a jerk, galling his 
tender limbs and irretrievably ruining his tem- 
per, — it is all the same ; there is no help for it. 
And really, to look around the world and see 
the people that are its fathers and mothers is 
appalling, — the narrow-minded, prejudiced, igno- 
rant, ill-tempered, fretful, peevish, passionate, 
careworn, harassed men and women. Even we 
grown people, independent of them and capable 
of self-defence, have as much as we can do to 
keep the peace. "Where is there a city, or a 
town, or a village, in which are no bickerings, 
no jealousies, no angers, no petty or swollen 
spites ? Then fancy yourself, instead of the neigh- 
bor and occasional visitor of these poor human 
beings, their children, subject to their absolute 
control, with no power of protest against their 
folly, no refuge from their injustice, but living 



HAPPIEST DAYS. 415 

on through thick and thin right under their 
guns. 

" Oh ! " but you say, " this is a very one-sided 
view. You leave out entirely the natural tender- 
ness that comes in to temper the matter. With- 
out that, a child's situation would of course be 
intolerable ; but the love that is born with him 
makes all things smooth." 

No, it does not make all things smooth. It 
does wonders, to be sure, but it does not make 
cross people pleasant, nor violent people calm, 
nor fretful people easy, nor obstinate people rea- 
sonable, nor foolish people wise, — that is, it may 
do so spasmodically, but it does not hold them 
to it and keep them at it. A great deal of beau- 
tiful moonshine is written about the sanctities of 
home and the sacraments of marriage and birth. 
I do not mean to say that there is no sanctity 
and no sacrament. Moonshine is not nothing. 
It is light, — real, honest light, — just as truly 
as the sunshine. It is sunshjne at second-hand. 
It illuminates, but indistinctly. It beautifies, but 
it does not vivify or fructify. It comes indeed 
from the sun, but in too roundabout a way to 
do the sun's work. So, if a woman is pretty 
nearly sanctified before she is married, wifehood 
and motherhood may accomplish the work ; but 
there is not one man in ten thousand of the writ- 
ers aforesaid who would marry a vixen, trusting 
to the sanctifying influences of marriage to tone 



416 HAPPIEST DAYS. 

her down to sweetness. A thoughtful, gentle, 
pure, and elevated woman, who has been accus- 
tomed to stand face to face with the eternities, 
will see in her child a soul. If the circumstances 
of her life leave her leisure and adequate repose, 
that soul will he to her a solemn trust, a sacred 
charge, for which she will give her own soul's 
life in pledge. But how rnany such women do 
you suppose there are in your village ? Heaven 
forbid that I should even appear to be depre- 
ciating woman ! Do I not know too well their 
strength, and their virtue which is their strength ? 
But, stepping out of idyls and novels, and step- 
ping into American kitchens, is it not true that 
the larger part of the mothers see in their ba- 
bies, or act as if they saw, only babies ? And 
if there are three or four or half a dozen of 
them, as there generally are, so much the more 
do they see babies whose bodies monopolize the 
mother's time to the disadvantage of their souls. 
She loves them, and she works for them day and 
night ; but when they are ranting and ramping 
and quarrelling, and torturing her over-tense 
nerves, she forgets the infinite, and applies her- 
self energetically to the finite, by sending Harry 
with a round scolding into one corner, and Susy 
into another, with no light thrown upon the point 
in dispute, no principle settled as a guide in 
future difficulties, and little discrimination as to 
the relative guilt of the offenders. But there 



HAPPIEST DAYS. 417 

is no court of appeal before which Harry and 
Susy can lay their case in these charming " hap- 
piest days " ! 

Then there are parents who love their children 
like wild beasts. It is a passionate, blind, instinc- 
tive, unreasoning love. They have no more intel- 
ligent, discernment, when an outside difficulty 
arises with respect to their children, than a she- 
bear. They wax furious over the most richly 
deserved punishment, if inflicted by a teacher's 
hand ; they take the part of their child against 
legal authority ; but observe, this does not prevent 
them from laying their own hands heavily on their 
children. The same obstinate ignorance and nar- 
rowness that are exhibited without exist within 
also. Folly is folly, abroad or at home. A man 
does not play the fool out-doors and act the sage 
in the house. When the poor child becomes ob- 
noxious, the same unreasoning rage falls upon him. 
The object of a ferocious love is the object of an 
equally ferocious anger. It is only he who loves 
wisely that loves well. / 

The manner in which children's tastes are 
disregarded, their feelings ignored, and their in- 
sthicts violated, is enough to disaffect one with 
childhood. They are expected to kiss all flesh 
that asks them to do so. They are jerked up into 
the laps of people whom they abhor. They say, 
" Yes, ma'am," under pain of bread and water 
for a week, when their unerring nature prompts 

18* AA 



418 HAPPIEST DAYS. 

tliem to hurl out emphatically, " No." They are 
sent out of the room whenever a fascmatmg bit 
of scandal is to be rehearsed, packed off to bed 
just as everybody is settled down for a charming 
evening, bothered about their lessons when their 
play is but fairly under way, and hedged and 
hampered on every side. It is true, that all this 
may be for their good, but what of that ? So 
everything is for the good of grown-up people ; 
but does that make us contented ? It is doubtless 
for our good in the long run that we lose our pock- 
et-books, and break our arms, and catch a fever, 
and have our brothers defraud a bank, and our 
houses burn down, and people steal our umbrellas, 
and borrow our books and never return them. 
In fact, we know that upon certain conditions all 
things work together for our good, but, notwith- 
standing, we find some things very unpleasant ; 
and we may talk to our children of discipline 
and health by the hour together, and it will 
never be anything but an intolerable nuisance 
to them to be swooped off to bed by a dingy old 
imrse just as the people are beginning to come, 
and shining silk, and floating lace, and odorous, 
faint flowers are taking their ecstatic young souls 
back into the golden days of the good Haroun al 
Raschid. 

Even in this very point lies one of the miseries 
of childhood, that no philosophy comes to temper 
their sorrow. We do not know why we are 



HAPPIEST DAYS. ' 419 

troubled, but we know there is some good, grand 
reason for it. The poor little children do not 
know even that. They find trouble utterly in- 
consequent and unreasonable. The problem of 
evil is to them absolutely incapable of solution. 
We know that beyond our horizon stretches the 
infinite universe. We grasp only one link of a 
chain whose beginning and end is eternity. So 
we readily adjust ourselves to mystery, and are 
content. We apply to everything inexplicable the 
test of j)artial view, and maintain our tranquillity. 
We fall into the ranks, and march on, acquiescent, 
if not jubilant. We hear the roar of cannon and 
the rattle of musketry. Stalwart forms fall by 
our side, and brawny arms are stricken. Our 
own hopes bite the dust, our own hearts bury 
their dead ; but we know that law is inexorable. 
Effect must follow cause, and there is no happen- 
ing without causation. So, knowing ourselves to 
be only one small brigade of the army of the Lord, 
we defile through the passes of this narrow world, 
bearing aloft on our banner, and writing ever on 
our hearts, the divine consolation, " What thou 
knowest not now thou shalt know hereafter.'' 
This is an unspeakable tranquillizer and comforter, 
of which, woe is me ! the little ones know nothing. 
They have no underlying generalities on which to 
stand. Law and logic and eternity are nothing 
to them. They only know that it rains, and they 
will have to wait another week before they go a- 



420 ■ HAPPIEST DAYS. 

fishing ; and why could n't it have rained Friday 
just as well as Saturday ? and it always does rain 
or something when I want to go anywhere, — so, 
there ! And the frantic flood of tears comes up 
from outraged justice as well as from disappointed 
hope. It is the flimsiest of all possible arguments 
to say that their sorrows are trifling, to talk about 
their little cares and trials. These little things are 
great to little men and women. A pine bucket 
full Is just as full as a hogshead. The ant has to 
tug just as hard to carry a grain of corn as the 
Irishman does to carry a hod of bricks. You can 
see the bran running out of Fanny's doll's arm, 
or the cat putting her foot through Tom's new 
kite, without losing your equanimity; but their 
hearts feel the pang of hopeless sorrow, or foiled 
ambition, or bitter disappointment, — and the emo- 
tion is the thing in question, not the event that 
caused it. 

It is an additional disadvantage to children in 
their troubles, that they can never estimate the 
relations of things. They have no perspective. 
All things are at equal distances from the point 
of sight. Life presents to them neither fore- 
ground nor background, principal figure nor sub- 
ordinates, but only a plain spread of canvas, on 
which one thing stands out just as big and just as 
black as another. You classify your desagre merits. 
This is a mere temporary annoyance, and receives 
but a passing thought. This is a life-long sor- 



HAPPIEST DAYS. 421 

row, but it is superficial ; it will drop off from you 
at the grave, be folded away with your cerements, 
and leave no scar on your spirit. This tlirusts its 
lancet into the secret place where your soul abid- 
eth, but you know that it tortures only to heal ; it 
is recuperative, not destructive, and you will rise 
from it to newness of life. But when little ones 
see a ripple in the current of their joy, they do 
not know, they cannot tell, that it is only a pebble 
breaking softly in upon the summer flow, to toss a 
cool spray up into the white bosom of the lilies, or 
to bathe the bending violets upon the green and 
grateful bank. It seems to them as if the whole 
strong tide is thrust fiercely and violently back, 
and hurled into a new channel, chasmed in the 
rough, rent granite. It is impossible to calculate 
the waste of grief and pathos which this incapacity 
causes. Fanny's doll aforesaid is left too near the 
fire, and waxy tears roll down her ruddy cheeks, 
to the utter ruin of her pretty face and her gay 
frock ; and anon poor Fanny breaks her little 
heart in moans and sobs and sore lamentations. 
It is Rachel weeping for her children. / I went on 
a tramp one May morning to buy a tissue-paper 
wreath of flowers for a little girl to wear to a May- 
party, where all the other little girls were ex- 
pected to appear similarly crowned. After a long 
and weary search, I was forced to return without 
it. Scarcely had I pulled the bell, when I heard 
the quick pattering of little feet in the entry. 



422 HAPPIEST DAYS. 

Never In all my life shall I lose the memory of 
those wistful eyes, that did not so much as look up 
to my face, but levelled themselves to my hand, 
and filmed with disappointment to find it empty. 
I could see that the wreath w^as a very insignifi- 
cant matter. I knew that every little beggar in 
the street had garlanded herself with sixpenny 
roses, and I should have preferred that my darling 
should be content with her own silky brown hair ; 
but my taste availed her nothing, and the iron 
entered into her soul. Once a little boy, who 
could just stretch himself up as high as his papa's 
knee, climbed surreptitiously into the store-closet 
and upset the milk-pitcher. Terrified, he crept 
behind the flour-barrel, and there Nemesis found 
him, and he looked so charming and so guilty 
that tw^o or three others were called to come and 
enjoy the sight. But he, unhappy midget, did 
not know that he looked charming ; he did not 
know that his guilty consciousness only made him 
the more interesting ; he did not know that he 
seemed an epitome of humanity, a Liliputian min- 
iature of the great world ; and his large, blue, 
solemn eyes were filled with remorse. As he 
stood there silent, with his grave, utterly mourn- 
ful face, he had robbed a bank, he had forged a 
note, he had committed a murder, he was guilty 
of treason. All the horror of conscience, all the 
shame of discovery, all the unavailing regret of 
a detected, atrocious, but not utterly hardened 



HAPPIEST DAYS. 423 

pirate, tore his poor little innocent lieart. Yet 
children are seeing their happiest days ! 

These people — the aforesaid three fourths of 
our acquaintance — lay great stress on the fact 
that children are free from care, as if freedom 
from care were one of the beatitudes of Paradise ; 
but I should like to know if freedom from care is 
any blessing to beings who don't know what care 
is. You who are careful and troubled about many 
things may dwell on it with great satisfaction, but 
children don't find it delightful by any means. 
On the contrary, they are never so happy as when 
they can get a little care, or cheat themselves into 
the belief that they have it. You can make them 
proud for a day by sending them on some respon- 
sible errand. If you will not place care upon 
them, they will make it for themselves. You shall 
see a whole family of dolls stricken down simul- 
taneously with malignant measles, or a restive 
horse evoked from a passive parlor-chair. They 
are a great deal more eager to assume care, than 
you are to throw it off. To be sure, they may be 
quite as eager to be rid of it after a while ; but 
while this does not prove that care is delightful, it 
certainly does prove that freedom from care is 
not. 

Now I should like, Herr Narr, to have you look 
at .the other side for a moment : for there is a pos- 
itive and a negative pole. Children not only have 
their full share of misery, but they do not have 



424 HAPPIEST DAYS. 

their full share of happiness ; at least, they miss 
many sources of happiness to which we have ac- 
cess. They have no consciousness. They hav^e 
sensations, but no perceptions. We look long- 
ingly upon them, because they are so graceful, and 
simple, and natural, and frank, and artless ; but 
though this may make us happy, it does not make 
them happy, because they don't know anything 
about it. It never occurs to them that they are 
graceful. No child is ever artless to himself. The 
only difference he sees between you and himself 
is, that you are grown-up and he is little. Some- 
times I think he does have a dim perception that 
when he is ill, it is because he has eaten too 
much, and he must take medicine, and feed on 
heartless dr}^ toast, while, when you are ill, you 
have the dyspepsia, and go to Europe. But the 
beauty and sweetness of children are entirely 
wasted on themselves, and their frankness is a 
source of infinite annoyance to each other. A 
man enjoys himself. If he is handsome, or wise, 
or witty, he generally knows it, and takes great 
satisfaction in it ; but a child does not. He loses 
half his happiness because he does not know that 
he is happy. If he ever has any consciousness, it 
is an isolated, momentary thing, with no relation 
to anything antecedent or . subsequent. It lays 
hold on nothing. Not only have they no percep- 
tion of themselves, but they have no perception 
of anything. They never recognize an exigency. 



HAPPIEST DAYS. 425 

They do not salute greatness. Has not the Auto- 
crat told us of some lady who remembered a cer- 
tain momentous event m our Revolutionary War, 
and remembered it only by and because of the 
regret she experienced at leaving her doll behind 
when her family was forced to fly from home ? 
What humiliation is this ! What an utter failure 
to appreciate the issues of life ! For her there 
was no revolution, no upheaval of world-old theo- 
ries, no struggle for freedom, no great combat of 
the heroisms. All the passion and pain, the mor- 
tal throes of error, the glory of sacrifice, the vic- 
tory of an idea, the triumph of right, the dawn 
of a new era, — all, all were hidden from her be- 
hind a lump of wax. And what was true of her 
is true of all her class. Having eyes, they see 
not ; wdth their ears they do not hear. The din 
of arms, the waving of banners, the gleam of 
swords, fearful sights and great signs in the heav- 
ens, or the still, small voice that thrills when wind 
and fire and earthquake have swept by, may pro- 
claim the coming of the Lord, and they stumble 
along, munching bread-and-butter. Out in the 
solitudes Nature speaks with her many-toned 
voices, and they are deaf. They have a blind 
sensational enjoyment, such as a squirrel or a 
chicken may have, but they can in no wise inter- 
pret the Mighty Mother, nor even hear her words. 
The ocean moans his secret to unheeding 'ears. 
The agony of the underworld finds no speech in 



426 HAPPIEST DAYS. 

the mountain-peaks, bare and grand. The old 
oaks stretch out their arms in vain. Grove whis- 
pers to grove, and the robin stops to Hsten, but 
the child plays on. He bruises the happy butter- 
cups, he crushes the quivering anemone, and his 
cruel fingers are stained with the harebell's purple 
blood. Rippling waterfall and rolling river, the 
majesty of sombre woods, the wild waste of wil- 
derness, the fairy spirits of sunshine, the sparkling 
wine of June, and the golden languor of October, 
the child passes by, and a dipper of blackberries, 
or a pocketfiil of chestnuts, fills and satisfies his 
horrible little soul. And in face of all this people 
say, -. — there are people who dare to say, — that 
childhood's are the "happiest days." 

I may have been peculiarly unfortunate in my 
surroundings, but the children of poetry and nov- 
els were very infrequent in my day. The inno- 
cent cherubs never studied in my school-house, 
nor played puss-in-the-corner in our back-yard. 
Childhood, when I was young, had rosy cheeks 
and bright eyes, as I remember, but it was also 
extreme^ given to quarrelling. It used frequent- 
ly to " get mad." It made nothing of twitching 
away books and balls. It often pouted. Some- 
times it w^ould bite. If it wore a fine frock, it 
would strut. It told lies, — " whoppers " at that. 
It took the larger half of the apple. It was 
not, as a general thing, magnanimous, but " aggra- 
vating." It may have been fun to you who 



HAPPIEST DAYS. 427 

looked on, but it was death to us who were in 
the midst. 

This whole way of viewing childhood, this re- 
gretful retrospect of its vanished joys, this infat- 
uated apotheosis of doughiness and rank unfinish, 
this fearful looking-for of dread old age, is low, 
gross, material, utterly unworthy of a sublime 
manhood, utterly false to Christian truth. Child- 
hood is pre-eminently the animal stage of ex- 
istence. The baby is a beast, — a very soft, 
tender, caressive beast, — a beast full of promise, 
— a beast with the germ of an angel, — but a 
beast still. A week-old baby gives no more sign 
of intelligence, of love, or ambition, or hope, or 
fear, or passion, or purpose, than a week-old 
monkey, and is not half so frisky and funny. 
In fact, it is a puling, scowling, wretched, dismal, 
desperate-looking animal. It is only as it grows 
old that the beast gives way and the angel-wings 
bud, and all along through infancy and childhood 
the beast gives way and gives way and the angel- 
wings bud and bud; and yet we entertain our 
angel so unawares, that we look back regretfully 
to the time when the angel was in abeyance and 
the beast raved regnant. 

The only advantage which childhood has over 
manhood is the absence of foreboding, and this 
indeed is much. / A large part of our suffering is 
anticipatory, much of which children are spared. 
The present happiness is clouded for them by no 



428 HAPPIEST DAYS. 

shadowy possibility ; but for this small indemnity 
shall we offset the glory of our manly years? 
Becausfe their narrowness cannot take in the con- 
tingencies that threaten peace, are they blessed 
above all others? Does not the same narrow- 
ness cut them off from the bright certainty that 
underlies all doubts and fears ? If ignorance is 
bliss, man stands at the summit of mortal misery, 
and the scale of happiness is a descending one. 
We must go down into the ocean-depths, where, 
for the scintillant soul, a dim, twilight instinct 
lights up gelatinous lives. If childhood is indeed 
the happiest period, then the mysterious God- 
breathed breath was no boon, and the Deity is 
cruel. Immortality were well exchanged for the 
blank of annihilation. 

We hear of the dissipated illusions of youth, 
the paling of bright, young dreams. Life, it is 
said, turns out to be different from what was pic- 
tured. The rosy-hued morning fades away into 
the gray and livid evening, the black and ghastly 
night. In especial cases it may be so, but I do 
not believe it is the general experience. It surely 
need not be. It should not be. I hav^e found 
things a great deal better than I expected. I 
am but one ; but with all my oneness, with all 
that there is of me, I protest against such gener- 
alities. I think they are slanderous of Him who 
ordained life, its processes and its vicissitudes. He 
never made our dreams to outstrip our realiza- 



HAPPIEST DAYS. 429 

tions. Every conception, brain-born, has its exe- 
cution, hand-wrought. Life is not a paltry tin 
cup which the child drains dry, leaving the man 
to go weary and hopeless, quaffing at it in vain 
with black, parched lips. It is a fountain ever 
springing. It is a great deep, which the wisest 
has never bounded, the grandest never fathomed. 

It is not only idle, but stupid, to lament the de- 
parture of childhood's joys. It is as if something 
precious and valued had been forcibly torn from 
us, and we go sorrowing for lost treasure. But 
these things fall off from us naturally ; we do not 
give them up. We are never called upon to give 
them up. There is no pang, no sorrow, no 
wrenching away of a part of our lives. The baby 
lies in his cradle and plays with his fingers and 
toes. There comes an hour when his fingers and 
toes no longer afford him amusement. He has 
attained to the dignity of a rattle, a whip, a ball. 
Has he suffered a loss ? Has he not rather made 
a great gain ? When he passed from his toes to 
his toys, did he do it mournfully ? Does he look 
at his little feet and hands with a sigh for the joys 
that once loitered there, but are now forever gone ? 
Does he not rather feel a little ashamed, when you 
remind him of those days ? Does he not feel that 
it trenches somewhat on his dignity? Yet the 
regret of maturity for its past joys amounts to 
nothing less than this. Such regret is regret that 
we cannot lie in the sunshine and play with our 



430 HAPPIEST DAYS. 

toes, — that we are no longer but one remove, or 
but few removes, from the idiot. Away with such 
folly ! Every season of life has its distinctive and 
appropriate enjoyments, which bud and blossom 
and ripen and fall off as the season glides on to 
its close, to be succeeded by others better and 
brighter. There is no consciousness of loss, for 
there is no loss. There is only a growing up, and 
out of, and beyond. 

Life does turn out differently from what was 
anticipated. It is an infinitely higher and holier 
and happier thing than our childhood fancied. The 
world that lay before us then was but a tinsel toy 
to the world which our firm feet tread. We have 
entered into the undiscovered land. We have 
explored its ways of pleasantness, its depths of 
dole, its mountains of difficulty, its valleys of de- 
light, and, behold ! it is very good. Storms have 
swept fiercely, but they swept to purify. We 
have heard in its thunders the Voice that woke 
once the echoes of the Garden. Its lightnings 
have riven a path for the Angel of Peace. 

Manhood discovers what childhood can never 
divine, — that the sorrows of life are superficial, 
and the happiness of life structural ; and this 
knowledge alone is enough to give a peace which 
passetK understanding. 

Yes, the dreams of youth were dreams, but 
the waking was more glorious than they. They 
were only dreams, — fitful, flitting, fragmentary 



HAPPIEST DAYS. 431 

visions of the coming day. The shallow joys, 
the capricious pleasures, the wavering sunshine 
of infancy, have deepened into virtues, graces, 
heroisms. We have the bold outlook of calm, 
self-confident courage, the strong fortitude of 
endurance, the imperial magnificence of self- 
denial. Our hearts expand with benevolence, 
our lives broaden with beneficence. We cease 
our perpetual- skirmishing at the outposts, and 
go inward to the citadel. Down into the secret 
places of life we descend. Down among the 
beautiful ones, in the cool and quiet shadows, on 
the sunny summer levels, we walk securely, and 
the hidden fountains are unsealed. 

For those people who do nothing, for those to 
whom Christianity brings no revelation, for those 
who see no eternity in time, no infinity in life, 
for those to whom opportunity is but the hand- 
maid of bolfishness, to whom smallness is informed 
by no greatness, for whom the lowly is never 
lifted up by indwelling love to the heights of di- 
vine performance, — for them, indeed, each hur- 
rying year may well be a King of Terrors. To 
pass out from the flooding light of the morning, to 
feel all the dewiness drunk up by the thirsty, in- 
satiate sun, to see the shadows slowly and swiftly 
gathering, and no starlight to break the gloom, 
and no home beyond the gloom for the unhoused, 
startled, shivering soul, — ah ! this indeed is 
terrible. The " confusions of a wasted youth " 



432 HAPPIEST DAYS. 

strew thick confusions of a dreary age. "Where 
youth garners up only such power as beauty or 
strength may bestow, where youth is but the 
revel of physical or frivolous delight, where youth 
aspires only with paltry and ignoble ambitions, 
where youth presses the wine of life into the 
cup of variety, there indeed Age comes, a thrice 
unwelcome guest. Put him off. Thrust him 
back. Weep for the early days : you have found 
no happiness to replace their joys. Mourn for 
the trifles that were innocent, since the trifles 
of your manhood are heavy with guilt* Fight 
to the last.. Retreat inch by inch. With every 
step you lose. Every day robs you of treasure. 
Every hour passes you over to insignificance ; 
and at the end stands Death. The bare and deso- 
late decline drops suddenly into the hopeless, 
dreadful grave, the black and yawning grave, 
the foul and loathsome grave. 

But why those who are Christians and not Pa- 
gans, who believe that death is not an eternal sleep, 
who wrest from life its uses and o;ather from life its 
beauty, — why they should dally along the road, 
and cling frantically to the old landmarks, and 
shrink fearfully from the approaching future, I 
cannot tell. You are getting into years. True. 
But you are getting out again. The bowed frame, 
the tottering step, the unsteady hand, the failing 
eye, the heavy ear, the tremulous voice, they will 
all be yours. The grasshopper will become a bur- 



HAPPIEST DAYS. 433 

den, and desire shall fail. The fire shall be smoth- 
ered in your heart, and for passion you shall have 
only peace. This is not pleasant. It is never 
pleasant to feel the inevitable passing away of 
priceless possessions. If this were to be the cul- 
mination of your fate, you might indeed take up 
the wail for your lost youth. But this is only for 
a moment. The infirmities of age come gradually. 
Gently we are led down into the valley. Slowly, 
and not without a soft loveliness, the shadows 
lencrthen. At the worst these weaknesses are 
but the stepping-stones in the river, passing over 
which you shall come to immortal vigor, immortal 
fire, immortal beauty. All along the western sky 
flames and fflows the auroral lio;lit of another life. 
The banner of victory waves right over your dun- 
geon of defeat. By the golden gateway -of the 
sunsettino; 

" Through the dear might of Him who walked the waves," 

you shall pass into the " cloud-land, gorgeous 
land," whose splendor is unveiled only to the 
eyes of the Immortals. Would you loiter to 
your inheritance ? 

You are " getting into years." Yes, but the 
years are getting into you, — the ripe, rich years, 
the genial, mellow years, the lusty, luscious years. 
One by one the crudities of your youth are falling 
off from you, — the vanity, the egotism, the isola- 
tion, the bewilderment, the uncertainty. Nearer 

19 B B 



434 HAPPIEST DAYS. 

and nearer you are approaching yourself. You 
are consolidating your forces. You are becoming 
master of the situation. Every wrong road into 
which you have wandered has brought you, by 
the knowledge of that mistake, so much closer to 
the truth. You ho longer draw your bow at a 
venture, but shoot straight at the mark. Your 
purposes concentrate, and your path is cleared. 
On the ruins of shattered plans you find your van- 
tage-ground. Your broken hopes, your thwarted 
schemes, your defeated aspirations, become a staff 
of strength with which you mount to sublimer 
heights. With self-possession and self-command 
return the possession and the command of all 
things. The title-deed of creation, forfeited, is 
reclaimed. The king has come to his own again. 
Earth and sea and sky pour out their largess of 
love. All the past crowds down to lay its treasures 
at your feet. Patriotism stands once more in the 
breach at Thermopylae, — bears down the serried 
hosts of Bannockburn, — lays its calm hand in 
the fire, still, as if it felt the pressure of a mother's 
lips, — gathers to its heart the points of opposing 
spears, to make a way for the avenging feet behind. 
All that the ages have of greatness and glory your 
hand may pluck, and. every year adds to the purple 
vintage. Every year comes laden with the riches 
of the lives that were lavished on it. Every year 
brings to you softness and sweetness and strength. 
Every year evokes order from confusion, till all 



HAPPIEST DAYS. 435 

things find scope and adjustment. Every year 
sweeps a broader circle for your horizon, grooves 
a deeper channel for your experience. Through 
sun and shade and shower you ripen to a large 
and liberal life. 

Yours is the deep joy, the unspoken fervor, the 
sacred fury of the fight. Yours is the power to 
redress wrong, to defend the weak, to succor the 
needy, to relieve the suffering, to confound the 
oppressor. While vigor leaps in great tidal pulses 
along your veins, you stand in the thickest of the 
fray, and broadsword and battle-axe come crashing 
down throuo;h helmet and visor. When force has 
spent itself, you withdraw from the field, your 
weapons pass into younger hands, you rest under 
your laurels, and your works do follow you. Your 
badges are the scars of your honorable wounds. 
Your life finds its vindication in the deeds w^hich 
you have wrought. The possible to-morrow has 
become the secure yesterday. Above the tumult 
and the turbulence, above the struggle and the 
doubt, you sit in the serene evening, awaiting 
your promotion. 

Come, then, O dreaded years ! Your brows are 
awful, but not with frowns. I hear your resonant 
tramp far off, but it is sweet as the May-maidens' 
song. In your grave prophetic eyes I read a 
golden promise. I know that you bear in your 
bosom the fulness of my life. Veiled monarchs 
of the future, shining dim and beautiful, you shall 



436 



HAPPIEST DAYS. 



become my vassals, swift-footed to bear my mes- 
sages, swift-handed to work my will. Nourished 
by the nectar which you will pour in passing from 
your crystal cups, Death shall have no dominion 
over me, but I shall go on from strength to strength 
and from glory to glory. 




Caiiibridsre : Stereotyped and I'riiited by Welch, Bigclow, .t Co. 























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